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James29’s Spanish Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5367 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 553 of 668 09 November 2014 at 5:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Cool story, Steve. That's amazing you learned Samoan so fast. Being able to speak Spanish at a decent level has definitely built relationships in interesting ways. Just the other day I was at a Mexican restaurant and there was a young high school kid from Central America here on an exchange. He just got here and I think was overwhelmed by the differences and the fact that there are almost no Spanish speakers. We ended up chatting for quite a while because the restaurant was slow. I could tell that it had a big impact on him to simply be able to relax and speak in Spanish with someone. Here with so few Spanish speakers it is like you are instant friends with someone else who speaks the language. Plus, the native speakers really respect the fact that I learn their language and are always eager to speak Spanish... even if their English is much better than my Spanish.
This week's update will be short. After finishing my goals for 2014 earlier in the week I did another lesson from the Gramatica del Uso B1/B2 book. I may continue with that. I really like it. I'm also watching season 8 of the Simpsons. It has been several months since I've seen the Simpsons. One of the episodes seemed quite easy to understand and like they were "talking slower." I think my understanding has improved from all the reading I have done since I last watched the Simpsons. I also watched a few episodes of Caso Cerrado. I still don't know what to think about this show. It is entertaining and great for Spanish but I feel like I am watching a train crash just for the interest factor. I found myself needing to kill about an hour and I did not feel like watching more TV so I picked up the second Alex Rider book. I'm three chapters into it now. I never thought I'd have nice/easy/relaxing reading in Spanish. Edited by James29 on 09 November 2014 at 5:10pm 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 554 of 668 16 November 2014 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Not much new to report. I'm reading the second Alex Rider book and am about 3/4 of the way through it. I listen to the VOA news every week morning. I watched a few episodes of the Simpsons. I went to a good meetup too. I worked this weekend so I did not spend as much time on Spanish as I usually do, but I still managed to do something in Spanish every day.
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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 555 of 668 16 November 2014 at 10:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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James, I haven't been following your log for 9 months or so due to personal issues and I
return to find you still plugging away and gradually improving in your own humble (in the best sense of the word, please don't take that as me being patronising) but effective way. You are an inspiration. Edited by Random review on 16 November 2014 at 10:25pm 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 556 of 668 17 November 2014 at 2:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks, Martin. I have been wondering where you went. I hope things are ok for you. I just keep chugging along. In the back of my mind I always tell myself that protecting against burn-out and quitting is more important than progressing faster.
Yesterday I was in a bit of a rush and I cannot believe I forgot to mention that I am doing a lesson of the B1/B2 Gramatica de Uso del Espanol book every morning. It is good. Each lesson takes me about 20-ish minutes. Each lesson is two pages. The first page is an explanation of the grammar points for the issue and then the second page has exercises. I read the first page in about five minutes and then do the exercises (and check the answers) in about 15 minutes. All of it is in Spanish and can be used by anyone with any native language. I'd say it is "easy" for me in the sense that the stuff they are teaching is not new. I have seen it before but not necessarily studies it. I also only get a few questions wrong each day in the exercises. So far I like it and will continue to do one lesson each work day. 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 557 of 668 23 November 2014 at 1:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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This week I finished the second Alex Rider book. I'd say it was a bit tougher to read than the first one, but no major problems. I don't think I liked it quite as much as the first one. I already have the third one and will read it some time in the future.
I started the third Theodore Boone book by John Grisham. I am loving it. It is easier than Alex Rider and noticeably easier than the Hunger Games and Harry Potter. I really like this Grisham series. It is so fun to read and it is very easy to read. There are a few words every now and then that I look up, but most words I can accurately guess if I don't know them. I also am doing one lesson of the Gramatica de Uso del Espanol book every weekday morning. This will take a while to get through at 4-5 lessons a week. I flipped through some of the lessons toward the middle and end and it gets into some valuable stuff that I definitely need practice on. It is kind of cool because it focuses a lot on quirky things that regular grammar books don't work on. So far the first eleven days have been on the use of el/los/la/las/un/uno/una/unas in various contexts. It teaches a lot of exceptions and things that learners typically gloss right over. When I listen to VOA noticias in the morning I notice that I have two different modes. I have "space out" mode where I just listen and let the words go into my head and sometimes I just don't pay attention. Then I have "focus" mode where I listen very carefully to the news. The focus mode is tiring, but I can really understand it quite well when I listen. When I am spacing out I miss a lot of details. I consider this bonus time so as long as I keep listening every morning I am happy. I watched a couple episodes of Caso Cerrado and The Simpsons this week. Caso Cerrado is definitely easier for me to understand. I wish there was a website that simply had links to all of the episodes in a list. They all seem to have random order or you have to search for each episode. I like to just work my way straight through a list like I am doing with the Simpsons. Something kind of cool happened this week at work. I got a call from another guy who has a business similar to mine and we have a customer in common that we needed to talk about. I don't know this guy. He called me and when I answered he just launched directly into Spanish. He is an old American guy and apparently worked with Che Guevara. We had a nice chat in Spanish. It was kind of cool just chatting about his life history. 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 558 of 668 28 November 2014 at 2:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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I finished the third Theodore Boone book today. I love this series. I wish there were dozens of them. I read this one in about a week. Easier and more interesting than the other books I am reading. There is one more in the series but the Spanish translation is just coming out now and is not yet available in the US without paying a huge shipping fee from Spain. I'll get it eventually.
I really like devouring books. It feels cool to be reading full books in Spanish. I'm going to run out of interesting books at my level. I've got the next two Hunger Games books, three more in the Alex Rider series and one more Theodore Boone. I've ordered an Agatha Christie book in hopes that I will both be able to read it and it will be interesting. I could read the first chapter of one of her books online pretty easily so we will see. I think I'll read that next (assuming the Post Office does its job and gets it to me in a timely way). That would be awesome to have 30+ Agatha Christie books to work through in Spanish. If anyone has suggestions for a series of adult books that are easy to read I'd appreciate it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5775 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 559 of 668 28 November 2014 at 7:50pm | IP Logged | ||
I really like Terry Pratchett FWIW. 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 560 of 668 30 November 2014 at 3:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the suggestion, Martin. I had never heard of Terry Pratchett. It looks like that series is pretty popular. I'm not really into fantasy, wizards and those sorts of things. I wish I were because there are so many books in the young adult section of that type.
I really never read many novels. When I read I would read non-fiction type things. I always felt like reading about someone else's life was not as interesting as going out and living my life. I read a lot for work so when I got out of college I just stopped reading as much for fun. The only real novels I'd read were John Grisham books because I do like mysteries and his books were easy to read. My Spanish journey has made me much more interested in reading novels now. I wonder if I have now read more novels in Spanish than English. That is certainly possible. Reading in Spanish has certainly helped my English reading in terms of speed. I also now am starting to get into some of the stories and kind of enjoy "getting lost" in the lives of the characters (especially if I can relate to them in some way). I started reading "The Giver" yesterday in Spanish. It is interesting. It is a fairly short book and I've wanted to read it for a while because it is fairly easy to read. I never read it in English so it is a new story for me. I'm about 30% of the way through it now and it is different than I expected so far. It reminds me MUCH of Ayn Rand's Anthem which is quite surprising as I was not expecting that. Maybe it will start changing. I also went "shopping" with my wife on Black Friday. We have a tradition where we go out for the whole day. I am a good sport and go along with her even though I hate shopping. What inevitably happens is I get pooped out and just sit down and wait while she shops and we touch base every now and then. This time I brought a book. I decided to read the first of Sue Grafton's Alphabet Mysteries (A is for Alibi) in English. I've been complaining about finding suitable Spanish novels for my level and I figured I'd figure out what might be a "perfect" series of books for my Spanish and then read the first one in English. That way I think I'll be able to read the series in Spanish. Between Friday and yesterday I read through about 2/3 of the first book in the series and like it a lot so far. Here are my reasons for thinking I might like this series. There are 23 books in the series with the same star character doing essentially the same thing. She is a private detective and works out a mystery in every book. The books are relatively short. The books are told from the first person which seems to make it easier to follow and better for learning conversational Spanish. All of the books have been translated into Spanish. The first 16 books have Spanish audio books. So far the first book is quite interesting and easy to follow. It is just a chronological progression of the investigator's investigation. The only "problem" I've found is that some of the books in the series are a bit expensive to buy because they seem to be primarily sold in Spain and are difficult to find in the US. I bought the first book online for about $16. But, many of the later books in the series are quite cheap. Anyway, my plan is to finish off the first book in English and then read the same book in Spanish about a month from now. Then, I'll either continue with the series or maybe listen to the audio. I'm thinking of doing the same thing with a Grisham book. If I can get comfortable reading Grisham and Grafton in Spanish I'll have plenty of books for the next several years. Reading and "studying" is so much more enjoyable when I'm reading books I like. Ok, so I have been babbling. I'm posting today mostly to get back on track of updating my log on Sunday. I like being on a weekly schedule. I guess I am too much of a creature of habit. I'm still doing the VOA news every morning on the way to work. That falls into the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" category. It is a habit that is working its way into stone. I'm doing a lesson every week morning in the Gramatica de uso del Espanol B book. Good stuff. I'd say it really is a book for the B1/B2 level. I feel like I am at a fairly solid B2 level and with each lesson I read the lesson and say "oh, I basically know that". I get the vast majority of the exercises correct, but would probably screw up a number of them if I tried to do the exercises before the grammar lesson. I also usually make more mistakes unrelated to the grammar point at hand (I make gender mistakes, for example, on words I don't understand or I'll simply make a mistake because I don't know some factual thing the writers assume everyone will know, etc). I had a good short Skype talk with an old Skype partner. It was someone I had not spoken to in about a year or so. This conversation really made me realize that my Spanish has improved a lot over the last year. I'd say my comprehension and speaking ability were noticeably better. I also was waiting in line for lunch and heard two women chatting in Spanish. I politely barged my way into their conversation and we had a nice chat for ten minutes or so as we waited for the restaurant. It was interesting because I could understand them both perfectly, but the woman who couldn't speak English had some difficulty understanding me when I spoke fast and casual. For the first time I had to say to myself "wow, I need to slow down and speak more clearly..." when I was speaking in Spanish. That was cool... it was my speed and slurring that was the problem. Well, after four days off I'm all motivated to get back to the office tomorrow and have a great week. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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