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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 657 of 668 28 June 2015 at 1:17pm | IP Logged |
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Well, I still moving along with Spanish and loving it. This week I started the next (fourth) Theodore Boone book and I'm also moving along with the telenovela Los Miserables.
The Boone book is good. I'm almost half way done with it now. I read quite a bit yesterday on the beach. So far I like it the best of the four I've read, but I don't know what direction it is going to go. I want to say that I really see the value of "reading easy books." Forum member "Stelle" wrote a long post on this topic and it is well worth re-reading. This book is easy for me and does not really challenge my Spanish but it is good for all the reasons Stelle pointed out. I can just read and read it without having it feel like effort. In the evening when I am exhausted after work I can read this, etc. Even though it is quite "easy" there are still a ton of words I do not have in my active vocabulary and I get to see them in numerous different contexts. I also am picking up some totally new words or uses of words. Anyway, this is a great book series. The telenovela is great also. I only watched a few episodes this week. I finished episode ten today. I'm going to love it. It is amazing how they can weave such a complex web of a plot but at the same time have it so easy to follow. All the subplots weave together in very interesting ways. Every single scene tugs on you in one direction or another. I can quite easily follow the show. There are sometimes some sentences in certain conversations I don't understand, but it seems like there are very few of those. There are some slang words too, but not too many and it is usually pretty obvious what is being conveyed. I'm still listening to Spanish in the car in the morning. Every now and then the VOA news site screws up and gives me a news broadcast from a few weeks ago so I just listen to Spanish Obsessed podcasts. Meetups are also pretty good. I had a nice long talk with a man from Peru and he taught me some things. He was very helpful and interested in helping folks like me who are learning Spanish. The latinos around here seem to really respect and appreciate the fact that I'm learning Spanish and they offer a lot of help. I had a nice exchange with a new exchange partner on skype. We'll see how that works out. I seem to start these and then just never follow through on setting aside time to talk. Not much more going on. 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 658 of 668 30 June 2015 at 4:09pm | IP Logged |
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James, I believe the Spanish DLI course had by far the best exercises for number fluency
IIRC. It might be worth checking it out. I have started a log for returning to German for the summer (until October) and would be grateful if any of you were to check it out to help motivate me. James has already been kind enough to do so. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 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 659 of 668 03 July 2015 at 11:27am | IP Logged |
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For numbers, i developed a sort of "manía" when i was younger and started counting to myself when waiting for things. I switched over to Spanish when i started learning Spanish. So sitting on a bench waiting for a friend, i would count up to say, 100, then count down, over and over. I think that helped me a lot with numbers but probably isn't going to be useful to many other people.
I also like to walk a lot, so another thing i would do is read the numbers off of license plates. I would try to read them as fast as i could so that i could read the license plate of every single car as i walked past. I sometimes read individual numbers, sometimes read them as one large number. License plates in Spain have much fewer numbers, though. Other helpful things for me were making sure i actually read every single number in the books i read. Also, doing math in Spanish was a huge help. When adding things up in my head at the grocery store, i made a point of doing it in Spanish. I actually think that'd be the best way to get used to Spanish numbers, taking a 2nd or 3rd grade textbook and doing all the additions/multiplications in Spanish. A computer program to do something similar would probably be really simple, ask you "¿Cuánto es tres más veintidós?", give you say two-three seconds to type/say the answer, then ask the next question. EDIT: Dates are also good practice, since they are read as full numbers (dos mil quince, mil novecientos catorce). Edited by Crush on 03 July 2015 at 11:28am 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 660 of 668 05 July 2015 at 2:28pm | IP Logged |
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Those are some good ideas for numbers fluency. I'm not really sure why they seem so different. It is like my brain just cannot work that fast to comprehend the number. Dates like 1823 and 1795 and things like that are tough... especially when they are all strung together. I'd be hopeless if a news story said "between 55,000 and 61,000 Americans died in Vietnam between 1965 and 1975" or "the S&P 500 was up 2.35% yesterday, 4.56% for the week and 12.45% for the year." Telephone numbers are almost impossible for me too. When I hear a phone number on a radio ad I often think how useless it is on me because I would never be able to get it. Oh well.
Anyway, I'd say this was a pretty good week. Somehow I managed to find a lot of extra time to do Spanish even though I felt extraordinarily busy. I've been reading the fourth Theodore Boone book and I'm almost done. I might actually finish it later today. I had about two hours on Friday in a coffee shop while I was waiting between meetings on the road and I read the whole time. I'm also watching more episodes of "Los Miserables." WOW, this telenovela is awesome. I am really getting into it. The plot is incredible. They just weave everything together in a way where almost every single scene has you on the edge of your seat thinking "man, that is going to make things more complicated." At the same time, it is not at all cheesy. There is nothing too unrealistic or silly. I have a hard time thinking they can keep up this pace with the plot for the entire show. I watched episode 14 today and there are 119 episodes. A few things that annoy me about the telenovela... I'm watching it on the Telemundo website because the episodes on youtube are a bit off in terms of the sound matching up with the video. Telemundo has these commercials that are just thrown in at random times and the show stops right mid-sentence of whatever is going on at that random time. I find that horribly annoying. Also, this will sound kind of silly, but I really don't like any of the female characters. I find the male characters so much more developed and interesting. With the other telenovelas I watched I found I could bond a bit with at least one of the female characters and I kind of liked it. The ones in this show so far are all kind of just pretty faces that are not too interesting. Sure, the lead character is the center of everything, but she is not pulling me in to her story and it is a bit annoying that everyone under the sun is in love with her. I do like the girl cop that is in love with Daniel, but unfortunately she is not really in the show too much. I don't really like the lead male character, Daniel. I'm really pulling for his brother, Cesar el Diputado. Anyway, it really is a good show, I just hope there are some more characters I can get "attached" to. If they kill off Cesar I'll be pretty pissed off. I had some long drives for work and listened to a bunch of "advanced" podcasts on Spanish Obsessed. The interviews that are done by the Colombian girl are much more "advanced" than the ones that are done by the British guy. His are fine, but he speaks fairly slowly and the person being interviewed seems to slow down a bit because he is not a native speaker. I had a couple good skype exchanges. I, once again, am trying to find a new partner and will try to be a better partner this time. Well, that's it for now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 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 661 of 668 05 July 2015 at 5:49pm | IP Logged |
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Phone numbers are hard for me, too, especially when they mix things like 4-7-8-87-35, but i think i can still keep up. It's just not as fast as when i hear them in English, i need an extra second or two to repeat what i heard in my head afterwards.
I've got a loooong list of movies and shows that i want to watch in Spanish, but most of them seem pretty boring to others so maybe something like Los miserables i could actually watch with other people without them complaining, heh. I never actually considered watching a telenovela before, though ;) I've also listened to some of the "advanced" podcasts of other Spanish podcasts (like SpanishPod) but wasn't really too impressed. The English-speaking hosts tended to make quite a few mistakes and a good part of the podcast was the native speaker correcting the non-native host. Their Spanish was definitely good, but i think at that point it's probably better just to record conversations between native speakers on a specific topic. That was several years ago though and i'm not sure how Spanish Obsessed is. I generally just listen to podcasts intended for native speakers, one of my favorites is Los sonidos de mi barrio. 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 662 of 668 06 July 2015 at 2:24am | IP Logged |
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I am generally disappointed in what I have been able to find in terms of podcasts in Latin American Spanish. I listen to Spanish Obsessed because the guests are always from Latin America and the length of the podcasts is perfect for my morning commute. There is a lot of stuff from Spain, but I'd prefer to just listen to the news than a podcast from Spain. I love "Spain Spanish" and I'd say it is probably the easiest for me, but I'm really trying to bump up my Latin American Spanish comprehension. Spanish Obsessed is similar to what you experienced. The host speaks well (definitely better than me) but still makes mistakes and speaks fairly slow. I'll definitely check out the podcast you linked to. I don't have time now, but I'll check it out.
I NEVER watch "fiction" TV shows, but I'm really drawn in to Los Miserables. You should give it a try. I think after 5-6 episodes you will know if you like it. I would not even really call it a telenovela in the typical sense of the word... it is really a very long well done drama series. 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 663 of 668 11 July 2015 at 5:07pm | IP Logged |
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I'm updating my goals for 2015 because I finished the fourth Theodore Boone book today by John Grisham.
1. Finish Gramatica de Uso del Espanol B1/B2. -> DONE. 2. Read novels totaling 1,000,000 words. -> Finished seven novels totaling 631,000 words (En Llamas with 105,000; El Fiscal en el Candelero with 66,000; Diez Negritos with roughly 66,000; Los Litigantes with roughly 127,000; The Black Echo with 152,000; Alex Rider #4 with 58,000; and Theodore Boone #4 with 57,000 words). 3. Listen to Spanish every morning on the way to work. -> So far, so good (although I have listened to some French in this time period). 4. Watch any 100 30 minute TV episodes. -> So far have watched equivalent of roughly 52 episodes. 5. Write 12 letters or memos for correction. -> No progress. 6. Read the Spanish side of Assimil's New French With Ease (Spanish Base). -> DONE. Discussion: This was a good Theodore Boone book. It got a bit too political for me (I don't like Grisham's political diatribes). It was quite simple to read and kept my interest. This is a great series. I'd say it is the easiest reading young adult series I've found. I started reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I've wanted to read this book for a long time. I really enjoyed Atlas Shrugged and have heard this is just as good. I've read the first four chapters and it is holding my interest. We'll see. Spanish meetup is good. Good core group of Latinos that come to the group and really raise the level. One of the American guys speaks Spanish very well and I've noticed that often times when there is a new Latino they ask him where he is from and they cannot tell that he learned Spanish as an adult. That really motivated me to get my Spanish level up. There is no reason I cannot get my Spanish up to that level. The Telenovela is great. Don't read the rest of this paragraph unless you want a part of the telenovela spoiled... I'm going to spoil a storyline. I cannot believe they killed off Cesar el Diputado! He was the only good character that I could bond with. I am just shocked they killed him. He is one of the headlining actors on the cover and everything. Well, that's all for now. I've got tons to do. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4657 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 664 of 668 11 July 2015 at 5:22pm | IP Logged |
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For a change of pace, you might like to listen sometime to Canarias Radio: http://www.rtvc.es/canariasradio/
Though the shows are not from Latin America, obviously, the accent of the hosts and guests is very different from that of mainland Spain's radio stations. To my ear it actually sounds much closer, phonologically, to Venezuelan Spanish than to what you would hear on RTVE. Also, big plus, there is plenty to download and the audio is top quality. Edited by tastyonions on 11 July 2015 at 5:27pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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