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Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4137 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 201 of 384 10 February 2014 at 2:04am | IP Logged |
1e4e6 wrote:
Also, I am not sure whereat you would evaluate yourself at CEFR level, but you seem
quite good to me, perhaps approaching B2 if not already in B2 therein itself. |
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Honestly, I'm not exactly sure what my CEFR level is. My tutor figures that I'm at a B2, but I haven't taken any tests,
so I can't be sure.
If I ever live in a city that offers testing, maybe I'll give it a shot!
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| PointsDotsLines Diglot Groupie United States Joined 3999 days ago 76 posts - 110 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, English Studies: Spanish
| Message 202 of 384 10 February 2014 at 5:56am | IP Logged |
Stelle wrote:
......Every time I sit down to write, I run into a very serious problem: I DON'T WANNA! Ha! Once I get started it's not so
bad, but I have a major procrastination problem, so a short text takes me about an hour and a half to write: 75
minutes to keep putting it off, and 15 minutes to actually get the words written. That said, I do really like getting
corrections from native speakers. They're valuable and I love the feedback. I just have to commit and build a
writing habit.
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How funny that you’re a teacher yet you don’t like to write. Don’t let your students see this. Hahaha;-) You write excellent posts in your blog; I thought you’d love to write. Those entries could be great resources for your Spanish writing practice. Maybe you can write about your upcoming Camino de Santiago e.g. preparations, anticipations (los verbos subjuntivos;-)
I actually don’t feel writing as daunting as it used to be. Whenever I get a chance, I’d write down something –- weekend running, local arts festivals, architecture walking tours that I lead on weekends, order a meal in Spanish at Taco Cabana, wintry weather, etc. -- in Spanish or “Spanglish” for X amount of time without thinking about grammar, spelling, punctuation. (Brainstorming, freewriting or whatever it is called. You know what I’m talking about, right?)
After I pile up enough content for two or three paragraphs, I begin to do the actual writing, organize paragraphs, check grammars/verb tenses/conjugations (all the fun stuff;-) This process takes much longer, usu. about an hour and a half or longer.
I agree with you too that the corrections and feedback received from native speakers are valuable:)
Edited by PointsDotsLines on 10 February 2014 at 5:59am
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| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4137 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 203 of 384 10 February 2014 at 11:16am | IP Logged |
PointsDotsLines wrote:
How funny that you’re a teacher yet you don’t like to write. Don’t let your students see this. Hahaha;-) You
write excellent posts in your blog; I thought you’d love to write. Those entries could be great resources for your
Spanish writing practice. Maybe you can write about your upcoming Camino de Santiago e.g. preparations,
anticipations (los verbos subjuntivos;-)
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Thanks for the laugh! I love to write in English. I think that writing in Spanish is difficult for me in large part because
writing in English is so effortless. :) I like your idea of coming up with a few topics in advance.
Edited by Stelle on 10 February 2014 at 11:17am
1 person has voted this message useful
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4137 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 204 of 384 12 February 2014 at 10:08pm | IP Logged |
I just booked 16 sessions on italki between now and my departure date on March 15th. I think I have 19 ITC left in
my account, which is equivalent to one dollar and 90 cents. I'm going to have to teach a lot of French sessions when
I get home from Spain so that I can keep on learning!
I'm really pumped for the 16 hours of conversation that I'll be doing in the next month. 14 of them will be focused
on conversational Spanish, and two will be for learning some basic greetings in Basque and Gallego, the two other
main languages spoken in the regions where I'll be walking.
I can't believe that I'm leaving for the Camino de Santiago in 31 days!!!
Edited by Stelle on 12 February 2014 at 10:11pm
4 persons have voted this message useful
| tomgosse Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3985 days ago 90 posts - 143 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French
| Message 205 of 384 12 February 2014 at 10:27pm | IP Logged |
¡Buen viaje! Vaya con Dios.
- Tomás
1 person has voted this message useful
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4137 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 206 of 384 17 February 2014 at 2:18am | IP Logged |
2014 Spanish challenge, week seven:
100 45-minute TV shows: 3 (28/100)
2 episodes of The Simpsons (2.13, 2.14) - counts as 1 for tracking purposes
120ish minutes Notes in Spanish - counts as 1 for tracking purposes
1 episode of Buffy la Cazavampiros (3.16)
100 Skype conversations: 3 (16/100)
1/2 hour with Lina (italki tutor)
1 hour with Carla (italki tutor)
1 hour with Ana (italki tutor)
100 short texts: 1 (9/100)
email to language partner
14 novels: 1 (2/14)
finished the first Percy Jackson book
read the first chapter of the second Percy Jackson book
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| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4137 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 207 of 384 24 February 2014 at 2:06am | IP Logged |
It's been a quiet week for Spanish, but a busy week for life! I've been working like crazy, trying to make some
extra money before my trip. Oh, and - of course - I've been watching Olympic hockey.
I'm now 20 days away from my departure. I can't believe that in less than 3 weeks, I'll be resting in St-Jean-Pied-
de-Port, ready for an early morning start on the Camino de Santiago.
This week has been about packing, and weighing, and re-packing, and weighing again, and taking stuff out, and
putting stuff in, and… I'm not generally an obsessive person, but I've definitely crossed the line when it comes to
my backpack! I'm having a hard time keeping my total weight under 6.5 kg, which is my goal. The problem is that
I'll be walking in March and April, and I know that the weather will be unpredictable.
All that said, playing with gear took precedence over Spanish study. Still, I managed quite a lot of conversation,
considering that it felt like I did nothing at all!
I had a very cool experience with an italki tutor yesterday. She speaks Basque, and I asked her to teach me some
basic greetings, as well as a few polite phrases. It was really interesting for me to learn bits and pieces of another
language using Spanish as the medium of instruction!
Basque is a fascinating language that's completely unrelated to the other Indo-European languages of Western
Europe. I don't expect that I'll ever learn it, but it does intrigue me, and I'm glad to know a few basic greetings.
buenos dias - egun on
buenas tardes - arratsalde on
muchas gracias - eskerrik asko
por favor - mesedez
si - bai
no - ez
soy Stephanie - Stephanie naiz
hola - kaixo
adios - agur
que tal - zer moduz
bien, y tu - ondo, eta zu
no entiendo - ez dut ulertzen
I'm SRS-ing these phrases, and hope to be able to use them when I'm in Southern France and Northern Spain.
Ironically, I can't for the life of me remember how to say "I don't understand", no matter how many times I repeat
it aloud.
Next week, I'll do the same with Gallego, another language widely spoken on the Camino de Santiago. I expect
that Gallego - which seems like a mix of Spanish and Portuguese - will be much easier than Basque!
2014 Spanish challenge, week eight:
100 45-minute TV shows: 3 (31/100)
80ish minutes of Notes in Spanish - counts as 1 for tracking purposes
2 episode of Buffy la Cazavampiros (3.17, 3.18)
100 Skype conversations: 4 (20/100)
total of 3.5 hours with 3 different italki tutors
100 short texts: 1 (10/100)
email to a tutor
14 novels: 0 (2/14)
I read absolutely nothing this week. Oops.
Edited to add:
I'm currently at lesson 47 of FSI Spanish Basic. I found that there was quite a jump in difficulty from volume 3
(which ended at unit 45) to volume 4 (units 46-55). I'm hoping to finish with all of FSI Spanish in the next three
weeks, but I'm not sure whether or not that will actually happen, since I find myself having to do several sections
more than once. If I make it to 50 and then find that I'm running out of time, I might just breeze through the last
five lessons, and then do them again more slowly when I get back from Spain.
Edited by Stelle on 24 February 2014 at 2:41am
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| nicozerpa Triglot Senior Member Argentina Joined 4319 days ago 182 posts - 315 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Portuguese, English Studies: Italian, German
| Message 208 of 384 24 February 2014 at 2:38am | IP Logged |
Gallego is indeed very similar to both Spanish and Portuguese, someone who is fluent in
those two languages can understand written and spoken Galician with very few problems.
Wow, just 20 days away from your departure! I hope you enjoy your trip to Camino de
Santiago.
¡Muchos éxitos!
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