Was It Something I Said?

Last night’s midterm exam was exhausting. Very few people finished early (I was not one of them). Most were still working when the teacher gave us two more minutes. Trying to write the essay of the test, I realized that most of the new vocabulary has not yet been absorbed by my brain. And, of course, as I was walking out to my car, I remember the correct forms of the irregular verbs that I got wrong on the test.

And, as it turns out, I’m not understanding some things as well as I imagine. One of the stories was about people disagreeing over the issues in an election. I thought one of the characters said that a lot of money had been spent on a referendum requiring more hospitals to be built. But that just led to more confusion, because in the next paragraph, the characters were talking about nuclear power. I mentioned this to some classmates who offered to help me. Then I realized that what the character had said was that all the money spent on the referendum could have been used (instead) to build more hospitals.

Italian grammar is not only different from English, it’s much more complicated. Some of us admit this is difficult to deal with. I’m irritated by those who dismissively say it’s not really hard. It’s as if they think the rest of us are too stupid to get it. But I wonder of all of them are really getting it. The homework and class exercises tell only part of the story. It’s possible to do well on those (as I generally do) and still not understand everything (as the example above indicates). Is it possible that the reverse can also be true, that the students who stumble over the exercises are nevertheless succeeding at comprehension and on the verge of fluency?

For my classmates who have requested this link, here is a very good online Italian-English (also French and Spanish) dictionary. http://www.wordreference.com/

I didn’t need to go to school to learn this. If the person with whom you are conversing suddenly offers you a breath mint, take it!

We continue to read the stories and articles in the book. As simple as these stories are, it is very difficult to get through them. First, I don’t know all the words, and the book defines very few of them. Of course I can look them up, and I do, but it is hard to look up all the forms of verbs. Dictionaries just don’t list them. If I can’t figure out what the infinitive is, I am out of luck. In most cases this isn’t too much of a problem, but with irregular verbs it can present an almost insurmountable challenge. We are now dealing with a tense called the “past absolute” which apparently is used only in writing, not speaking. (Why?!?) We haven’t studied this tense at all, although it appears to be fairly simple. If it’s a verb I already know, I will usually recognize it in this tense.

The other big problem is, as always, grammar. When mixed with unfamiliar vocabulary and unexpected verb tenses, the word order can turn each each sentence into a painful exercise in decryption. Throw in a few double pronouns and some reflexive verbs, and I have the distinct sensation that my brain is melting.

The first time through I can understand most of what the story is about. When I look up a few words, I can understand nearly all of it. But I’d like to be able to read Italian the same way I read English. That is, I want to understand what every word means, why it is being used, and why it is positioned where it is. I don’t even have to think about these things when reading English. But these simple stories in Italian sometimes leave me completely puzzled. I’ll see a string of little two- and three-letter words whose function eludes me. Yes, I know (I think) what each word means by itself. But what I often don’t know is what they are doing together. In an Italian sentence I find words whose equivalent would not be used quite that way in English (or missing words that would be required in English). If I can’t understand the reasoning here, I’ll never be able to speak or write correctly.

This school offers a two-year Associate’s degree in Italian. But it’s not really possible to earn the degree in two years. They don’t offer the classes often enough. For example, I was eligible for this class, Italian 3, last spring, and would have taken it (as would several of my fellow students), but it wasn’t offered. There’s a conversational class that is required, and that should be taken at the same time as this one, but it isn’t available this semester, and probably won’t be offered again until next fall. Ridiculous.

In the meantime, I still need to take that pesky math placement exam so I can enroll in (gulp) algebra.

We are still struggling with double pronouns (an Italian horror unimaginable to native English speakers) and prepositions (deadly traps for almost anyone learning another language). But we have now laid grammar aside for a while to focus on the reading book. Il professore confidently predicted we can finish this in about two weeks. To that I say, “Yikes!”

Here we are in our third semester, and many people in the class still cannot correctly pronounce more than four words in a row. Many of us still have trouble with verb conjugation. Although both the imperfect and the future tenses are relatively simple, it seems we barely touched them before moving on, and I’m pretty sure I can’t do them correctly. I’m not the only person who still has trouble understanding exactly how to decide whether to use the present perfect or the imperfect when talking about past events. Last night, as the homework was being piled on (why is there always more homework on a Monday, when we have barely two days to do it, and less on Wednesday, when we have nearly five days?) I felt that we are trying to move too fast.

Certainly, there are a few people in the class who have no problem with this pace. They are the people who already speak Italian!

It seems to me that, by trying to learn so much material in so little time, we are being shortchanged. How can we learn anything well if we don’t allocate enough time to master it? Italian pronouns are unbelievably complicated, and last night revealed that we still don’t understand them. Obviously reading and speaking are necessary, and I don’t want to spend all my time on the tedious details of grammar. But wouldn’t it be better to learn a few things well, rather than a lot of things poorly?

Oh, yes, there’s another test next week. Help!

I really hate fill-in-the-blank exercises. All too often, the sentences are so poorly written it’s extremely difficult to figure out what they are trying to say. If there is more than one blank, I’m likely to be completely lost. Sometimes there are errors of one kind or another in the sentences, which brings me to a dead stop. I can’t tell if it’s really a mistake, or if there’s something I’m just not understanding. These exercises bear no resemblance to anything I will do in real life. Under normal circumstances, I will already know what I’m trying to say. After all, if you want to _______, you should _______.

So far, we have spent much of the class time and homework on review, refreshing our knowledge of the grammar learned so far, especially verb tenses. This has been a blessing for me, not just because I need a little review, but also because I have not been in the right frame of mind to learn much new material. I have not put as much time into study as in past semesters. This is not from a lack of interest, but because there have been so many outside problems and events that have taken my time and attention. I have done just what is required with a minimum amount of study and none of the extra work (listening to tapes, completing unassigned exercises from the book from the book, watching Italian movies, etc.) that I normally would do. I hope that now things are settling down a bit and I will be able to focus more on learning Italian.

Ciao! is the textbook for some of the college courses I have taken. Like most required textbooks, it is outrageously expensive. The price includes the book, the workbook, and one very poor CD. To do all the exercises in the workbook requires a 7-CD set, which is sold separately! The book has some problems in the way it teaches new vocabulary. Sometimes new words are introduced without being defined, and many undefined words do not appear in the dictionary section. Information that is needed to understand one section isn’t explained until several chapters later. The exercises are repetitive, but not in a good way. They rarely provide practice for all the various forms of a word. Many of the recommended exercises involve silly role-playing with other students. And so on. Note that there are no answers in the back of the book. It’s intended for classroom use, not for those learning on their own.