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Stelle Speaks Spanish and Tagalog | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4147 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes  Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 305 of 384 08 August 2014 at 7:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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I started working with a new tutor. It's very different from anything I've done so far. While we do spend about 15
minutes in the beginning catching up with some informal conversation, most of the hour-long sessions are based around a university-level textbook about culture and geography in Spanish-speaking countries. We discuss what's in the book, and then compare it with Spain and Canada. It's interesting! It's also helping me to find big holes in my vocabulary. For instance, yesterday we were talking about local wildlife in Canada, and I had to look up a lot of words for birds: goose, loon, robin, cardinal, etc. I've been working on ramping up my watching in Spanish. In the past week, I watched one episode of Los Simpsons and the last 3 episodes of Buffy season 3 - a few of the best scenes of the entire series! I've also started watching Aqui No Hay Quien Viva on YouTube. It's a ridiculous sitcom (minus the laugh track, thank goodness!), and it's absolutely silly, but it's fun. My goals for the month of August (which I suppose I should have posted in the beginning of August!): - Watch at least 8 TV show episodes - Finish the Percy Jackson series - Finish Practice Makes Perfect Verb Tenses - I only have 28 pages to go In addition to that, I want to keep listening to Buenos Dias America every weekday, and speak for at least 6 hours over Skype. Edited by Stelle on 08 August 2014 at 7:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4912 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 306 of 384 11 August 2014 at 1:46am | IP Logged | ||
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I've asked others, but not really gotten much of an answer, so I'll ask you Stelle. What do you think of Practice Makes Perfect Verb Tenses? Have you tried any others in the series (or had your French students use them)?
The other option for French learners are the CLE books, such as Grammar Progressive du Francais. Have you ever used any books in this series with your students, and if so could you comment on them? Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4147 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 307 of 384 11 August 2014 at 2:55am | IP Logged | ||
I really like the Practice Makes Perfect Verb Tenses for Spanish, although there are a ton of US-centric pop culture references. I think that the book is great for introducing and explaining verb tenses, but there's no review built in, so you have to create your own. I did that by creating an anki deck with a mix of translation and cloze exercises pulling from the exercises in the book. I think that it's worked well for me! I've never actually seen the Practice Makes Perfect books for French, so I can't really answer your question. We use our own internal curriculum and materials in the immersion class that I teach, but my students also all have a copy of Schaum's Outline of French Grammar. It's not perfect (is anything?), but it's pretty good, and it covers a lot of grammar points. Some of my students find it very useful; others actually prefer the grammar explanations on french.about.com (which are quite good if you can learn to ignore the obnoxious ads plastered all over the place). Hope this helps! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4912 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 308 of 384 11 August 2014 at 3:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for your answer. I'll have a look into Schaum's. Of course I'm still not sure what to do about the Practice Makes Perfect. If you're not familiar with the CLE books, you might want to check them out. They are entirely in French, so they might be really good for an immersion course.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4147 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 309 of 384 15 August 2014 at 9:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm doing the six-week challenge in Tagalog (even though I said that I wouldn't). As a result, I've been
neglecting my Spanish a bit. I'm not concerned that a six week Tagalog binge will hurt my Spanish - but I'm certainly not doing what I need to do to keep advancing in español! I talked for an hour with a Spanish teacher on italki this week. Our focus was on grasslands and prairies. We read a text together about the plains in Columbia, and then talked about wildlife and grasslands in Canada and Spain. Last week we talked about mountains. Next week we'll talk about coastlands and oceans. A few months ago, I never would have imagined that I'd be doing - and enjoying - such structured skype sessions. But I really do love it, and it challenges me in new ways! Still, I'm looking forward to chatting with my old tutor over a coffee when she gets back from holidays next week. I have 200 pages to go in El último héroe del Olimpo, the fifth and final Percy Jackson book. But it's taking me sooooo long to finish! I can't read for more than 20 minutes at a time. Then my attention wanders and I have to put it down. If I'm completely honest with myself, I was done with this series after book 3. The reading level is definitely still appropriate for me, but the story just isn't doing it for me anymore. Too repetitive. And the main character is meant to age a year in every book, but he still reads like a 12-year-old to me. Still, I'm so close to finishing the series...it just doesn't make sense to stop now. I'm going to power through and make an effort to finish it within the next two weeks. I watched another episode of Aquí no hay quien viva. The characters are growing on me. I'll aim for at least 2 episodes this week. (Edited because auto-correct is not my friend) Edited by Stelle on 15 August 2014 at 9:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4147 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 310 of 384 19 August 2014 at 2:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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I just listened to a wonderful podcast on Nomadas:
Tanzania, la tierra del Kilimanjaro My first independent travel right after university was a backpacking trip through Eastern and Southern Africa with a girlfriend. We started in Nairobi and ended up in Johannesburg months later. Out of all of the countries that we visited, Tanzania was my absolute favourite! So this podcast - with the music and the short clips of Swahili - made my heart happy! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4254 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 311 of 384 19 August 2014 at 11:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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I just pinned your article about Spanish Podcasts. I'll have to check some of them out, especially the ones that are geared towards Latin America. I've been going through Notes In Spanish, but for some reason, it's gotten a lot easier now that I've started to read novels in Spanish. I think that I might add the Percy Jackson books to my to read list. I've thought about reading them in English, but by the time I finish reading the Divergente trilogy and a couple of other books that are on the list, I might as well try them in Spanish instead.
It's inspiring to see people who are ahead of me in their language journey. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4147 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 312 of 384 20 August 2014 at 1:10am | IP Logged | ||
How do you find the advanced podcasts? Are they also too easy? I think that Buenos Dias America is a good choice for your first native podcast - it uses Latin American Spanish, and it's pretty repetitive (isn't that always the way with the news?). It's easier than the podcasts on RTVE, although I really love the RTVE podcasts. re: Percy Jackson - I really liked the first three books! But I have to admit that this one is draaaaagging on. It's mostly my own fault, since I haven't been as committed as I should be to reading inSpanish every day. I got sucked into some young adult series in English, and that's all I've wanted to read for the past week! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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