Was It Something I Said?

What a difference between this semester and last! Italian 1 started with about 53 students, and slightly more than half eventually dropped the class. Of those who remained, many were never really serious. In Italian 2, about 15 people enrolled, and there seem to be about a dozen now attending class. (One similarity between this semester and last is that there never seems to be a night when everyone is present. The rate of absenteeism among students never ceases to amaze me. )

Here we have people who, for the most part, seem actually to want to learn Italian. In this much smaller class, everyone works every night. We spend more time talking. It’s painful, but of course it must be done. The only way to speak a language is to speak it. Every class session is intense.

Last semester it seemed that the older students had an advantage. Motivation, self discipline, and life experience were important contributors to academic achievement. This time, the young people may have the edge. More and more we do class exercises that require the ability to quickly remember things. We read a complicated dialog two or three times and then try to recreate it without peeking at the text. This kind of memory exercise is typically much more difficult for people over 40. Some of the younger students seem able to instantly memorize the entire dialog. We aren’t actually expected to recite it verbatim, so I try to focus on some key words and concepts that I can paraphrase. Undoubtedly it’s a good exercise, but it is also exhausting.

Walking across campus in the waning sunlight with my books tucked under one arm, I almost feel like a schoolgirl again. The familiar architecture and activities evoke a sense of energy and optimism that I had forgotten. For a moment, I could be thirty years younger (and thirty pounds lighter), with all my choices yet to be made. Of course, there are still plenty of choices ahead of me. And many that are gone forever. These days, many moments of joy are also tinged with grief, the all-too immediate knowledge of just how beautiful and desperately brief life is.

There is a group of friends and colleagues who all live in different cities, who meet a few times a year in various locations for a combination business/social reunion. This past weekend I went to the meeting in Grand Rapids, Michigan. On Sunday afternoon, driving back to the airport, Gary reminded me of how we all used to stay up talking and laughing (sometimes all night) at these events. Now, fifteen years older, we retire at a reasonable hour, letting the younger crowd party all night, and don’t think we’ve missed much. What we miss, I think, isn’t doing the silly stuff, it’s the ability and desire to do the silly stuff. If I could have anything in the world, it would be the one thing I can’t have, the return of my physical youth.

Italian Vocabulary Trainer: This has a lot of words and phrases, sorted into categories such as weather, shopping, health, home furnishings, etc. Memorizing this vocabulary could be useful, but understand that this is not a systematic approach to learning the language. It is just vocabulary.

At some point I decided I wanted to earn a degree in Italian. Among other things, this means I will have to take certain classes unrelated to my major interest. I sent for my old (and I do mean old) college transcript. Some of those classes will apply to the requirements here, but there is much I will have to do. For some reason, in my previous life as a Theater Arts major, I didn’t take a single college-level math class.

Here I will have to take a math placement test, to find out whether I am really ready for algebra, or whether I have to take what we used to call “bonehead” math to get caught up. Actually, I took an algebra course (twice) in junior high school. I have always understood the theories — I know where to put the parentheses — I just have trouble with the actual numbers. It’s a mild form of dyslexia. It hasn’t interfered much with my career as a computer programmer. There, I just have to come up with the algorithm, I don’t have to do the actual math. But don’t ask me to balance your checkbook without a calculator.

For now, I am doing what I did before, putting off the math. I’m fulfilling the health requirement with a class called “Women’s Personal Health.” I picked it largely because the time slot is right (it’s just before my Italian class). And by a friendly coincidence, the location is great, in the room right next door to Italian.

So I am becoming a real student. The online class I took in the summer was a crash course in how to be a student. This involves understanding how the bureaucracy works, accepting the petty abuses of my time and energy, and learning — as quickly as possible — how the teacher thinks, and applying that information to the work.

Italian 2 will have a decidedly different atmosphere from Italian 1. Thirteen people showed up the first night. (Compared to the 56 who arrived the first night last semester.) About half were familiar faces (sitting in our familiar places!) from Italian 1. Everyone here has some previous knowledge of Italian, and it seems likely that most have chosen this class for more than just a required credit.

For me, the good news is that it seems it will not be too hard to remember whatever I may have forgotten during the summer. We will spend the first two to three weeks reviewing. The bad news is that, in a smaller class, the spotlight will be on me more often. I am not always comfortable reciting in class, especially since I don’t have the short-term memory power that some other students do. The good news is, my reading skills are still strong. The bad news is, my listening skills are still weak.

The Standard Deviants – Italian, The Basics
It is very simple, but if you are just starting, as I was, simple can be a good thing. This DVD alone will not have you speaking Italian, but it will give you a foundation. It explains the rules for pronouncing words as they are spelled, and offers a small starter vocabulary and some grammar. I used it as part of a larger program that included a variety of books and tapes. It is not as detailed as the second DVD in the series, and you probably can skip this one go to the second one if you have already started with other materials. Still, I enjoyed it.

The Standard Deviants – Parla Italiano
While this item by itself is unlikely to have you speaking Italian, it does provide quite a bit of important information. It has a lot more detail than “The Basics”. For example, I appreciated the very detailed explantions of how to conjugate the various verbs. It’s well organized, with a review at the end of each section, and the option of just playing through all the reviews without having to go through everything again. As a supplement to a beginning course of study it provides plenty of information and reinforcement.

My grand plans of reviewing my Italian lessons in a systematic way never materialized. I did look at the books a couple of times. I feel as though I have forgotten at least half of what I knew. Of course, I have four more days before the first class of the new semester, so there is still time!

I took an online course. Cramming fifteen weeks worth of material into five weeks was not easy, but it added three more units to my general ed credits.

I discovered RateMyProfessors.com.