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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| BOLIO Senior Member United States Joined 4651 days ago 253 posts - 366 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 273 of 344 04 November 2014 at 10:43pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I just took a little trip down memory lane and I have been laughing at myself. I still encounter the same frustration but with different issues. Por vs Para is still very real but concerning other items; "Ha corrido bastante agua abajo los puentes." Steps on Soapbox If you happen to be reading this and are thinking about starting this journey, please let me share something with you. I am a terrible student. I have no gift of languages or language learning. I am OLD. I have done most things incorrectly or at the very least I have wasted a huge amount of time. More than likely, you will listen, read, write and speak better than me. You will advance quicker than me. Start it. If you have started then keep at it. Don't quit. Start a Log. Before you do though, go and read all the old logs that have only one or two entries. Be resolved to stick with it. It is like the advice Iguanamon gave me recently, Woody Allen said "90% of life is just showing up." I was sitting in Starbucks today listening to the people next to me speak. I could not understand everything. Listening is an even worse skill set for me than speaking. However, I could understand so much more than I could 6 months ago. While I was there I read this site on the Spanish forum. I was amazed how few words I had to look up in the 45 minutes I read. I still cannot produce all the words or place them perfectly within a sentence but my reading comprehension is off the charts vs only two months ago. Man, it feels so good. I know I have a loooong way to go and I get humbled every day. Before leaving the coffee shop, I asked the couple where they were from and we had a little small talk and I stumbled and felt like a toddler. It's ok. They did not bite my head off. Just the opposite was true. They were amazed that this big "Bolillo" was trying to communicate with them in their language. Make the world a smaller place...learn a language. Steps off Soapbox BOLIO 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| BOLIO Senior Member United States Joined 4651 days ago 253 posts - 366 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 274 of 344 10 November 2014 at 5:12pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Hope everyone is well. No real huge updates. I keep plugging away. I did take off a few days this week from FSI. I still enjoy it but when I get the mood for something different I do it.
I spent three days with "Breaking out of Beginners Spanish". The book has been mentioned by others many times and I worked through much of it. I really enjoy the book. It is a book in English that has many concepts or ideas that are used in Spanish. I write down some of the example sentences and then try to create my own. It was very nice to casually throw out a phrase or sentence to my wife and see her surprised responses. What she did not know is I had practiced saying it 25 times before it just "Happened" to find it's way into our conversation (English conversation at that). After three or four times. she was amazed and was going on and on about how my Spanish was so much more advanced than just a couple of weeks ago. As I had run out of my new impressive sentences and idioms and had obviously set the bar too high for future conversations, I came clean and told her she had been speaking with a talking parrot and not a person who has now mastered her native tongue. She laughed, but I will get these concepts and ideas down and using them quickly helps me to remember them better. I am still listening to audio books while reading it in Spanish. I have not read in English while listening to the Spanish in a few days. This is difficult for me. I feel like it causes me to translate even more mentally than when I read the Spanish. I think the purpose of the method is the exact opposite. I will spend more time with it but have a couple of questions for those who have done it. When done correctly, am I supossed to let the unknown words fly by? I know not to stop the recording but after enough time is this "Natural Listening" thing just going to happen like Iversen's epiphany moment? Is the mind automatically going to make the connections or am I supposed to be taking notes to try and build the bridge? Any help there would be appreciated. BOLIO 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5525 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 275 of 344 10 November 2014 at 5:56pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I have never had an epiphany moment in any of my languages. I think epiphanies tend to happen when one skill is much stronger than another. For example, if you can read easily and fluently, but your listening comprehension is weak, then maybe it's possible for things to suddenly "click", as your brain figures out how the sounds you're hearing relate to the words you can already read. For me, listening comprehension works more how I describe it here: I need some way to somehow "decipher" a useful portion of the audio, generally using internal context, pictures, or prior knowledge. And anything that I can manage to decipher, I can eventually internalize through sheer exposure. But if I can't decipher much, it's of little use to me. I didn't develop decent French listening comprehension by listening to the radio and waiting for a sudden ephiphany. (I certainly spent a long enough time trying…) I finally starting making progress when I tried easy television, and watched season after season of a single show, and then another, and then another. The predictable plots and the repeated vocabulary gave me one little clue after another, and eventually that added up to something pretty useful. When I'm working on listening, I look for two things: 1. Am I having little "ah-ha" moments on a regular basis, as I figure out new vocabulary and expressions? 2. Am I understanding new stuff without even noticing that I never actually knew it before? Also, reading helps massively with listening. When you can read comfortably, without much deciphering, at roughly conversational speed, listening will get a lot easier. Things may work differently for you, of course. But I hope this helps! Edited by emk on 10 November 2014 at 5:57pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| BOLIO Senior Member United States Joined 4651 days ago 253 posts - 366 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 276 of 344 15 November 2014 at 12:01am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Thanks emk. I appreciate your info because comprehension is my weakest link.
Grammar question: The Past Perfect and the preterit Perfect seem to be saying the same thing to me. Habia comido. ( sorry for the lack of accent...on my cell) Hube comido. When and why are the questions. Crush??? Or any grammar inclined individuals. Thx 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5858 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 277 of 344 16 November 2014 at 5:29am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I'd say in general they are exactly the same thing. To me, hube sounds more bookish and more "inmediate". In the spoken language, you'll practically never hear it. I would use había for everything and just realize that hube/hubo means practically the same thing. Sometimes it might be more fitting to replace it with the preterite, though (salimos cuando hubo amanecido = salimos cuando amaneció/(ya) había amanecido).
In general, "hubo" marks immediacy and you'll usually (always?) see it with other adverbs like "apenas", "no bien", "tan pronto", or even "cuando". Unless you plan on writing literary masterpieces in Spanish, i think you can safely learn to recognize it without really learning on how to use it (like with most Spanish speakers, i think). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| BOLIO Senior Member United States Joined 4651 days ago 253 posts - 366 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 278 of 344 24 November 2014 at 5:21pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Recognize without really learning it...I like that. Thanks for the help. I have been spending time with a book I bought quite some time ago 501 Spanish verbs. I use it during slow points of the day and just browse. They have 14 different verb tenses for all the verbs and I pick around the book looking a different verbs that I encounter.
One problem I have is knowing when to use Ser vs Estar but I understand 99% of the time in the present tense. SER = permanent and ESTAR = temporary status or condition. But I become confused on which to use in the past tense. And to add to it when to use the preterite vs the imperfect. I never thought fui vs era vs estuve vs estaba would become such a huge concern in my life. :) It does become very confusing for me. And this is a real example of the difference between being able to read something vs being able to produce something speaking. You read it, understand it and move on without focusing on the little differences. My wife gave me advice this morning. She said I just need to keep saying it and "we" (her and her friends) will keep correcting me. Last week, after reading older logs about FSI, I made the decision to redo previous FSI Units. I would work through the units a few times but they would not become automatic for me. I think I should have spent more time with the units. It is apparent to me that I have short changed my listening and speaking by not working the units until the dialogue and drills are easily understandable and my responses are without thinking. Honestly, I would stop the tape, gather my thoughts and then give a response. Once I was able to give the correct response, I moved forward. I need to be able to more easily recognize the conversations I engage in. I also need to be able to respond more quickly and with less effort for me and most importantly the other poor guy or gal who has drawn the short straw in speaking with me. I have a tendency to paint myself in a corner by ALWAYS attaching end dates to courses or goals and I must stop doing this. Honestly as much as the thought of doing it over makes me sick, Assimil would really benefit me if I did it again to the point I could shadow all the lessons. I am reworking FSI unit 19 today. I can see myself speaking without translating internally one day but today ain't that day. I do have these strange phrases that pop into my head. I have no idea where they come from. Last night I was watching an award show with my wife and "Quienes son la gente en la foto?" pops in my head. What the heck? I have not looked at a photo in months. And my grand prize favorite...."Si quieres algo de comer, París es hermoso en el verano." Are you kidding me? If you want something to eat, Paris is pretty in the summer??? My wife thought I had a stroke. I would laugh at what I was thinking about and she would ask me what was so funny. I would blurt out, "Si quieres algo de comer, París es hermoso en el verano." I hope this is progress and not a medical condition. :) All the best, BOLIO 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5858 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 279 of 344 25 November 2014 at 6:02am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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When i did Platiquemos, the first round was always with the pause button and sometimes the second round, too. However, after a couple repititions i stopped using it and repeated the unit until i could answer nearly everything in the pause provided. Usually this meant 6 cycles through a unit, there were maybe one or two i considered done in 5, and a couple (painful) units that took me 7. It's up to you to decide how thorough you want to be, but repeating a unit until you know it well will really benefit your Spanish, especially as you progress into the later units. I think it's also easier to do it now than to come back to it later, once you finally finish FSI will you really want to start it over again? You don't have to answer 100% correct all the time, you should get a feel for when you're ready to move on. I think i was generally around 90-95% answering in the pause provided.
I think Assimil is great for picking up vocabulary and comprehension and that's what i mostly use it for. I use other sources for trying to activate my speech because i don't really like spending more than a half hour/forty five minutes on Assimil. To me, that's a magic number and i really enjoy Assimil when i stick to that time length. For me, finishing Platiquemos was synonymous with leaving formal study material behind to just use the language and native materials. Your Spanish has improved a ton these past few months, so i'd say that whatever it is you're doing now, don't stop! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5255 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 280 of 344 25 November 2014 at 12:54pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I believe your issue with Spanish isn't that you need to do Assimil over again, but that you need to engage more with the language outside of the course, alongside your course. I know you're married to a Spanish-speaker, but I think if you would engage either in a free skype language-exchange or, better, with an online tutor you'd start to see the language as more than a "plug and chug" situation. You'd be amazed at what a difference even an hour a week with a paid tutor can make in your language skills. First, you don't have to worry about your halting, uhhing and ahhhing, word-searching. The tutor expects that and has heard it all many times before. Your language-exchange partner (if at the same level in English as you are in Spanish) will be doing the same in English and will understand as well. Speaking with someone for a long period of time forces you to use the language and it gets you used to using it. Yeah, you'll sputter and your brain will hurt because you'll want to say something and you can't. Like anything else, the more you practice something, the better you get over time. The difference I find in a language-exchange and a tutor is that the tutor will help you more easily and know how to help you. Many people don't want to spend any money at all on language-learning. I understand. It's hard to justify spending money on a want instead of a necessity. Online Spanish tutoring can be had for around $10 an hour from Guatemala (try PLQE.org or nulengua.com). That's about the cost of a lunch out (on the mainland). Of course, working with a tutor most efficiently is the catch and that would be another post. I can just tell you that it worked extremely well for me in Portuguese. Even once a week, or once every two weeks, tutor sessions would do wonders for your Spanish. The key to using a tutor, in my experience, is to know when to be guided and when you need to be the one who decides what to work on. The only issue I see with doing Assimil over is that it can become a trap. I've seen people do it over with no problems and I've seen people do it over, then feed it all into srs and do it over again. At this point it can become more of a hindrance to progress in my opinion as the learner tends to focus primarily on courses as the main interaction with the language. Spanish starts to become a "thing" instead of a living, breathing language. Pause button: I've never used it with language materials. If I can't answer the question or do the task in the pause provided, I go over the unit again until I can. I figure that's why the pause is there and as long as it is. I don't count words, time or repetitions so I can't tell you how many times that was, and I know we're all different and learn differently. I just found for myself, with the DLI Portuguese drills and Pimsleur, that the key to developing "automaticity" was doing the repetitions in the pause provided. Then using (speaking, writing, reading, listening) the language outside of the course (along with the course) consolidated it for me. I agree with Crush, your Spanish has improved a great deal since you started. What you are doing seems to be working. Just know that we all have gone through the sputtering and coughing engine stage. It's frustrating and seems like it will never end but it gets better. If you can accept that and yet still work on improving, it can give you a good mindset for language-learning. Believe me, I have good days and bad days with the language. I have days when I can talk about anything and days when I can't even remember some simple things- especially if I'm tired or stressed. This is a part of language-learning that we all go through, especially when our lives are mostly lived in our native language. I accept my imperfection and continue to strive to improve. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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