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| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5367 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 161 of 668 03 September 2012 at 12:15am | IP Logged |
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I finished Atlas Shrugged earlier this week. What a great feeling. I am very glad I did it. I learned a lot and it was a fun thing to do. I will definitely do a L2/L2 read through the book at some point in the near future... hopefully before the end of the year.
If anyone is looking for a very long and very interesting book for LR, I cannot imagine a better book than Atlas Shrugged/La Rebelion de Atlas. I think it definitely helped my listening comprehension and my vocab too. I listened to a few books of my NIV/NVI Bible and it sounded MUCH slower. Before the Bible audio sounded incredibly fast and now it just sounds fairly normal. I was sick this week so my Spanish time was more limited than usual. I did, however, do a couple very long skype talks. One was entirely in Spanish and very long. At this stage I feel very comfortable just chatting in Spanish and don't seem to really have any problems in a 1 on 1 conversation. There are, of course, words and concepts I don't understand, but my partners cooperate so much that that is not a problem. I have not been to a meetup in a while. Hopefully I will get back on track with those because they are definitely helpful. I LRed the first hour of Cajas de Carton L2/L2 today. There are still some words I don't know, but not too many. I would say my understanding of the Spanish is now almost perfect. I have, of course, gone through the book several times now. I will continue to work through the book until I finish it. I am more than a third done with it now. I have also started the Practice Makes Perfect Subjunctive Up Close book. This is very different than anything I have used so far. It reminds me of a college English course. There is tons of technical jargon that I don't even really know in English (antecedents, dependent clauses, etc, etc). I wish there was a different way to teach it than having to use technical grammar terms. That being said, it does seem like a good book and I am glad I am using it. Each chapter has a narrative section and then an exercises section. Right now I am simply reading through the book without doing the exercises. I am learning a lot and it makes the subjunctive seem more logical and easier to understand. It is also a pretty fast read if you skip the exercises. I have already finished four or five chapters. After I finishing reading it I will go back and read it again and do the exercises. I have also started watching La Reina del Sur. Wow, this is going to be cool. I am EXTREMELY pleased that I took the time to read the book before watching the Telenovela. That was time well spent and really helps me know what is going on. I don't think I would be liking it as much if I had not read the book. I have only watched the first two episodes now, but I feel like I will be able to get back into my old routine of wathing a show in the evening. I really need to decide what I am going to do to prepare my Spanish for Ecuador. I am thinking of working through Unit IV of FSI and I am also thinking of doing Living Language Ultimate Advanced. Both would be about the right amount of time for me to finish just before my trip. I feel like I need to do something to bump up my speaking before I go. My listening has been improving and I feel like my speaking has slipped a bit. I am definitely motivated again. There is something about Atlas Shrugged that makes you feel like you can conquer the world! I have already accomplished all of my 2012 Spanish goals with the exception of the Bible. I wanted to read through the NIV in L2/L1 before the end of the year and it is very clear I will not get that done. I think I will just keep slowly working it. It is hard to spend a lot of time on it in one sitting. I don't feel too bad about not accomplishing this goal as I have done many other things that were not part of my list, including this L2/L1 read of Atlas Shrugged. I have been thinking more and more that I really need to continue with structured courses. I should have at least one real course or "study" material going at all times in order to continually improve. I spent 60 hours doing LR on Atlas Shrugged and it was very fun and worthwhile... I learned a lot too... but I did not really spend any time doing any real "study" while I was reading it. FSI and Assimil really cause me to IMPROVE my Spanish at a much faster rate than these "fun" things I do. When I speak with natives I really appreciate the time I put into Assimil and FSI... particularly FSI. I need to keep remembering that. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5367 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 162 of 668 05 September 2012 at 12:12am | IP Logged |
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I had a great experience today. I unexpectedly used Spanish today at work in a very important situation. It went extremely well and really made a big difference. Eventually (years in the future) I expect to be doing more of this type of work and I was very encouraged by this experience today. This one experience made so much of my hard studying worth it.
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| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5775 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 163 of 668 05 September 2012 at 4:30am | IP Logged |
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Is it delicate are can we have more details?
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| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5367 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 164 of 668 07 September 2012 at 1:10am | IP Logged |
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Random Review - I sent you a PM.
While I am here I am going to update my log. I have been working my way through the PMP Subjunctive book and reading Cajas de Carton. I have read the entire PMP book once without doing the exercises and now I am re-reading it and doing the exercises too. I have finished the first two chapters with exercises. It is not bad, but it is not great either. Like I said before, it is very technical. The examples seem good so far. I think I had high hopes because it is an entire book about the subjunctive and I thought it would make a huge difference. It definitely does help me understand the subjunctive better so I guess it is doing its job. I am happy enough with it that I will definitely continue working my way through it. I have done about 2.5 hours of Cajas de Carton and should finish it soon. I like the book and think I may shadow it. I have been doing a lot of emailing and text chatting in Spanish. I have noticed that I am quite "sloppy" at times. I mix usted/tu endings and make stupid mistakes without even really noticing it. I only am seeing this now becaue I have been proof-reading my emails now before sending them and I am surprised at the silly mistakes I often make. I guess it will get better with time. I also went to a meetup. It was good. I am more and more comfortable speaking Spanish now and it really does not seem to be too much "work" anymore. I used to get headaches after meetups, but now I just feel like I was chatting for an hour or two. I have done a few skype chats and those are getting more and more helpful. I have been doing a lot of planning for my trip to Ecuador. I am amazed at how many things there are in such a small country. The different parts of the country seem so incredibly diverse. Edit: I forgot to add that I am still watching La Reina del Sur and it is great. Edited by James29 on 07 September 2012 at 2:48am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5367 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 165 of 668 10 September 2012 at 2:56am | IP Logged |
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OK, I have now done four chapters of the PMP subjunctive book with exercises and I am changing my mind a bit. I think it is pretty good. The exercises are really helping me. I am doing them pretty well and only making a few mistakes on each section. The mistakes are more related to not knowing a word or simply doing something sloppy, but not really related to my knowledge of the subjunctive. I do, however, really need to think and take my time when doing the exercises. I feel that I am really learning the subjunctive now and it is getting easier.
I also finished Cajas de Carton. I think it is a great book every time I read it. I don't think I would ever get sick of it. I noticed that the writing gets progressively more difficult as I go through it. The last two short stories are a bit harder than the first several. I have done another good skype talk since my last post. I can now do skype in my car (audio only, of course) when I take long drives. This is pretty cool and makes my long boring drives much more interesting and productive. On another long boring drive I listened to the last two hours of the Rich Dad audiobook. I have never read that book in English or Spanish and I understand it pretty well. It is written at quite a low level of the language, but the concepts and content are quite interesting to me. I watched the eighth episode of La Reina del Sur tonight. I am really glad I read the English version first because I notice I understand certain parts much better than others and tonight it clicked... the parts I understand well are the parts that follow the book and the parts I am having a hard time with are the parts that are not in the book. I heard a few people speaking Spanish today in a bookstore and I eavesdropped. I could understand them pretty much perfectly for about 5-10 minutes. They were not really talking about anything other than just small talk, but it was still kind of fun to know exactly what they were saying and they were just talking to each other normally. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5367 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 166 of 668 17 September 2012 at 3:16am | IP Logged |
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Well, my opinion of the PMP subjunctive book is getting even better. It certainly is not perfect, but it is really helping me a lot. There are seven chapters. The seventh chapter is only comprehensive exercises. The other chapters have an explanatory/narrative section and then exercises. I have read the explanatory sections twice now and have done all of the exercises on chapters 1-6. I have also gone back and re-done chapter 5. I will re-do chapter 6 also. Those chapters were quite difficult for me, but this second time through the exercises I understand it much better. I will also sometime do the chapter 7 exercises.
It makes me realize that there is certainly a point where I hit a wall with my Spanish. This book really showed me. I breezed through chapters 1-4 pretty easily and then crashed and burned on chapters 5 and 6. I just simply did not know the Spanish grammar in those chapters and had never really studied it other than some drills in FSI. I am also now reading El Leon, La Bruja y El Ropero with the audio. It seems VERY easy. I am enjoying it. I read about half of it this past week and will likely finish it this coming week. I am thinking of getting the two other Narnia books with Spanish audio. I like the story and the narrator is good. The audio quality is outstanding. I also did a meetup this week. Nothing too special, but I saw someone I had not seen for a long time and it made me realize how much I am improving. That was nice to realize that I am still slowly improving. I did a few text chats. I get numerous comments from natives that my writing is almost perfect. I don't use any accents or the different n... I just simply don't bother and I don't know how to do it. I did a short skype talk with a new person. It is interesting to talk with new people. I can very easily understand Spaniards. I noticed that this person's English was pretty good and then I realized that my Spanish was noticeably better than their English. That was cool. I am still watching La Reina del Sur and I am sure I will watch the whole series. Today I watched episode 11. It is entertaining and I like it. I don't really feel drawn to any of the characters yet, but it is a good story. I am amazed at how many of the words I do NOT understand. I can fairly easily follow the plot, but when I think about it I am really missing a lot of the words. I wonder how much help this is. I am starting to think accent is more important than I thought before. I think I have a very good accent so I am happy. I notice when someone speaks with a bad English accent it can be extremely difficult to understand them. This week I will finish up with the PMP subjunctive book and also finish the Narnia book. Then I think I will start La Rebelion de Atlas L2/L2. If I start it now I can probably finish it before my trip to Ecuador. It is 59 hours and if I do an hour a day I will be able to get it done. I should be able to do that because I did the L2/L1 read slightly faster. I don't really want to put it off until after the trip and I don't want to take that book with me to Ecuador so I feel pretty confident I will dive into it soon. I have been thinking a lot about how to progress in a language. Active study like FSI, Assimil active wave, PMP subjunctive book, are extremely important and seem to be under-rated on this website. When I think about taking 60 hours to read Atlas Shrugged L2/L2 I have to say to myself that that time would be much better spent (in terms of actually learning/developing my Spanish) on something else. Taking 60 hours to watch La Reina del Sur seems almost worthless compared to the alternatives. That would be enough time to spend an hour on every single Assimil Using Spanish lesson or go once through all of the FSI lessons. The comparison is not even close. The problem, of course, is motivation and burn out. I just don't feel like diving back into FSI right now or starting Using Spanish. And with La Reina del Sur it is easy to watch in the evenings and I will NEVER be able to study actively in the evenings so in a way I don't even really count TV time because I think of it more as simply relaxing and not learning Spanish. If someone has the motivation to stick with the advanced courses they should definitely do it. The only place I think they fall short is in listening comprehension because there is not really any way to teach that or practice that very well with a course. I am hoping that when I finish Atlas Shrugged this next time I will feel like diving into either Using Spanish or FSI. I would really like to do FSI again and then Using Spanish... or perhaps both together. For some crazy reason I often feel like waiting and waiting to use Using Spanish like it is some sort of very expensive and tasty dessert that I am going to gobble up with pleasure when I am done with everything else. Speaking of Using Spanish, I read the text of two random lessons this week and I found them very easy to understand. I have listened to the audio and the audio is challenging for me to understand without the text. I have a hard time thinking I will be past the stage of Using Spanish anytime in the next couple years so I will keep waiting and let my taste buds just anticipate it even longer. I also read some of the Spanish in my Assimil French book (El Frances). The Spanish was extremely easy to read. I don't think I would have a problem using Spanish based Assimil to learn French. I will not do it, but it is nice to know that I could and I am happy that I have the book/audio. I have so many things going on in my life now that I could never find time to learn French unless I dropped Spanish and I won't do that for at least a couple more years. In fact, when I do this log every week I realize that I have been putting in less and less time with my Spanish. Luckily I am still able to do Spanish every day (and almost NEVER miss a day) and, more important, I am having a blast and love it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5367 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 167 of 668 22 September 2012 at 7:55pm | IP Logged |
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I finished The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe today. There are some odd vocabulary words in it, but generally it is a very good book for learning Spanish. It makes me appreciate more, however, reading books like Atlas Shrugged and even the da Vinci Code which are certainly much more interesting stories.
I also have finished working through the exercises for chapters 5 and 6 of the PMP subjunctive book. For now, I don't think I am going to work through chapter 7. I had a long drive for work and listened to all the Living Language Ultimate Advanced dialogues. I did not pay attention all the time so it was not really that productive, but when I was paying attention I could understand it fairly well. The quality of those dialogues is great. I had a meetup, but I had to leave very early. I had a couple short skype talks. Mobil phones are cool. On one talk my partner was walking around the streets in Spain and it was very cool. I almost felt like I was there. I have been busier and busier with family, work and other hobbies so my Spanish has suffered. I don't mind this because I think I used to spend too much time with Spanish. Now, I will be happy if I just do some Spanish every day. Well, that's it for this week. I don't know what I will do next. Who knows? I guess I will figure that out tomorrow and just do whatever I feel like. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4757 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 168 of 668 23 September 2012 at 6:09am | IP Logged |
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How's La Reina coming? I'm sure for the rest of my life, whenever I think of Spanish,
I'll think of Teresa Mendoza. I started out feeling great about my Spanish because I could understand some of it. 63 episodes later, I could understand most of it. I loved all of the different accents, and versions of Spanish in it. My wife and I watched the show every night as my Spanish caught up with and passed hers. After I finish Spanish with Ease, I plan to watch La Reina all over again on DVD. I haven't found a good replacement from the current set of telenovela's. Most of the time in my house, we have Filipino soap operas on; I need to get a Spanish one back into our schedule. steve Edited by sfuqua on 23 September 2012 at 6:10am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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