Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5857 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque
| Message 625 of 668 03 May 2015 at 4:06pm | IP Logged |
Maybe you could find a way to connect your computer to the TV? Or even connecting something like a Raspberry Pi to your TV as a sort of portable movie box (with internet access) isn't too complicated. It might be more relaxing to sit on a couch to watch TV rather than in front of the computer. Also, when i was studying Spanish i often took Platiquemos with me on my walks. When i finished Platiquemos, i started listening to audiobooks during my walks. I'm a big fan of audiobooks!
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Clarity Groupie United States Joined 3514 days ago 85 posts - 107 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 626 of 668 03 May 2015 at 7:41pm | IP Logged |
James29, I can relate to the desire to escape the computer screen. Let us know if you find a good alternative! I'd be very interested to hear about it. Crush, the Raspberry Pi solution sounds like a great idea (and delicious too).
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rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin
| Message 627 of 668 03 May 2015 at 7:58pm | IP Logged |
Your laptop has a hdmi cable output and the TV an imput, then you are all set.
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Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5001 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian
| Message 628 of 668 03 May 2015 at 11:23pm | IP Logged |
rtve.es site does have a huge selection of radio programs. I haven't tried yet (I am
pretty happy with tvseries for now but I would love radio plays like those Emme uses for
German) but there must be something you would find interesting. And it is native input
meant for natives, no intermediate podcast. Just an idea.
I have no doubts you'll complete everything planned by the end of the year :-)
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James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5367 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French
| Message 629 of 668 04 May 2015 at 12:37am | IP Logged |
With the TV thing I have a problem watching real TV in my house too because I have two kids... so I'm fourth in line in terms of priority for TV. I'd never be able to watch TV in my house without headphones. The best I can do is take my laptop to a quiet corner and put headphones on... but that doesn't work too well. I don't really mind... I find that listening to just audio in the car is good for developing my listening.
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James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5367 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French
| Message 630 of 668 10 May 2015 at 1:15pm | IP Logged |
Well, I'm back for my weekly update. Things were a bit more normal this week in my life so I settled back into my regular routine. I did not get up quite as early as usual this week simply because I've been so sleep deprived lately. The extra 30 minutes of sleep got pulled directly out of my Spanish time. Even with that missing time I had a pretty good week.
I'm on the final push of the grammar book. Man, I love pushing through the last couple weeks of a big project. This is a great book and I've only got another 9-ish lessons left. I don't usually do the lessons on the weekend, but this weekend I just had to bring it home and I did lessons today and yesterday morning.
I've also read a good chunk of the Black Echo by Michael Connelly. I've probably got a couple hours left. One "problem" with the Kindle is I cannot figure out how to tell how many "pages" are left. Now I have it set on how much time is left in the chapter and that is a really cool feature. I am sure there is some sort of way to tell, but I'm not too swift with switching settings so I'll just leave it. I like the book good enough to read another of his books some day, but I am looking forward to reading a bit more of a "page turner" next.
I'm trying to push through the Spanish side of the French Assimil book by the end of May. I read lesson 97 this morning and will probably read another lesson or two later today. I have been getting more and more motivated to really study French. We'll see how long that motivation lasts.
I've developed a fairly good new language exchange. We text chat briefly every day for just a few minutes and then have nice short conversations once a week. It is becoming consistent which is good. We'll see.
This week I saw someone post a link on the forum to "Light Speed Spanish" podcasts and I checked out the website. It is pretty good. I listened to a few of the advanced lessons. I liked their explanation of the direct/indirect object distinction. It was helpful. I listened to some of their advanced podcasts in the car on the way to work. I'm not sure I'll continue with them because I'd prefer something a bit more advanced, but it is definitely a great free resource I'd never seen before and they have a ton of material.
I made it back to the meetup this week. Actually, I was out of town this week on the day they do a meetup in a different city and went to that one too. I had not been to that city's meetup for well over a year and my improvement was very noticeable to the members.
I made a big decision this week. I need to hire someone at my business and I asked the hiring company to send me someone who is bilingual in Spanish/English. It may be tough to find someone who is appropriate for the position, but I told them that is what I want and, at least at first, I'm not going to hire someone unless they are bilingual. We'll see how this works out. Frankly, I'm not hopeful of finding a suitable candidate. I'll give it a couple weeks.
A whole bunch of things are coming together pretty soon... Grammar book, Connelly book and the Assimil book, will all be done very soon. After I think I will just focus my Spanish time on reading books. My big struggle is if I really commit myself to French.
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Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5001 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian
| Message 631 of 668 10 May 2015 at 5:49pm | IP Logged |
Wow, that is some serious progress here! COngratulations to getting so many things to a
happy ending these days!
Edited by Cavesa on 10 May 2015 at 5:49pm
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iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5254 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)
| Message 632 of 668 10 May 2015 at 6:29pm | IP Logged |
A good way to keep count of pages is to google the book in hard copy to find out the page count and do the math with the percentage, which is what I do. Some kindle books from Amazon have the option to display page numbers.
According to Good Reads, "Black Echo" by Michael Connelly has 482 pages in English and 496 pages in Spanish according to amazon.es. So 10% = 49.6 pages. 1% = 4.96 pages, etc. Rounding to 5 pages = 1% gives you a good idea. One of the reasons I like to know how many hard copy pages a book has is so that I don't get discouraged when I keep turning pages on my kindle e-ink device and the percentage doesn't change after several turns. When I read Julia Navarro's book, "Dispara, yo ya estoy muerto" I remember being very frustrated when the percentage wouldn't move after multiple page turns and then, after searching, I found it was a 912 page book!
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