BOLIO Senior Member United States Joined 4650 days ago 253 posts - 366 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 145 of 344 07 May 2014 at 3:28pm | IP Logged |
Kind of slow the last two days and only two hours of work between both days. I am leaving for a trip through my work and there has been way too much extra work in preparing for the trip. However, today I should have a couple hours in the airport to work on Assimil. I am really focusing on completing the course for the first time. I know I will look back at it several times in the future but I really want to complete it and move on to FSI as my primary learning source.
I am not a news person as most times it leaves me depressed, but I am really enjoying the Democracy Now website that IguanaMon made me aware of recently. I can follow along with the reporter via text as she speaks like she is in a spead reading contest. The content is really above me. However, I enjoy it and it helps me understand what my goal is. My wife and her family do not speak that quickly when visiting with each other. But in fairness, it is a much higher level of communication than the casual language of my wife's family. But my goal is to one day be able to professionally conduct business (Investments) in Spanish.
While preparing for my trip yesterday, I listened to episode 40 of Destinos and could understand much more of the content than when I watched it the first time. With the subtitles, all but a few words were understood. Just a little reinforcement of marked progress. I am 30 days away from Chiapas Mexico and will spend much of my free time on my studies.
All the best.
105/345
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James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5367 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French
| Message 146 of 344 07 May 2014 at 10:53pm | IP Logged |
One of my hobbies is investing. I found that the series "Rich Dad Poor Dad" is written at an extremely basic level. I read some of the Spanish translations quite early on in my Spanish reading days. It is probably not the type of investing stuff you want to read about, but he explains things as a story and you will learn investing vocabulary, etc. Plus, there are a ton of books in his series. There is a free Spanish abridged audio book of first book in the series widely available on youtube (he released the copyright on that)... I listened to that tons of times in the car. If you are interested I may be able to get you some other of his audio books in Spanish.
I also have on my list a 2+ hour class on value investing from UFM in Guatemala. I love their site and you can find tons of good stuff there. Many of their videos have a transcription. I listened to their 12 hour economics course a few times and followed along with the transcript.
Here is the value investing course. There are two parts.
and
Here is the economics course with transcripts.
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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 147 of 344 08 May 2014 at 11:01pm | IP Logged |
You might also be interested in checking out free online courses given at coursera.org, they have quite a few courses in Spanish of varying interest. You might be interested in the course "Continuidad y desarrollo de la empresa familiar", for example. It might give you a nice introduction to vocabulary you'd need to conduct business in Spanish, as well as the opportunity to ask questions and talk with native speakers, both the professors and other students. The courses tend to repeat themselves, so if you don't catch it now you could try waiting six months or so and jumping in then. There are a few courses on Spanish writing which seem like something i might want to take, such as "Fundamentos de la escritura en español" or "Corrección y estilo en español". :)
I've done some programming courses there in French and it was nice practice, they have lots of videos and audio with subtitles, often translated into English. I believe you can download the videos, too. It can be a nice excuse to work on a skill you've been interested in but haven't been able to convince yourself to dedicate the time to it.
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nancydowns Senior Member United States Joined 3914 days ago 184 posts - 288 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written)
| Message 148 of 344 09 May 2014 at 5:01am | IP Logged |
Hey Crush, That's a great resource, Thanks for mentioning it! No way I can do any of those right now, but like you say, it would be good for just
driving home a language later.
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BOLIO Senior Member United States Joined 4650 days ago 253 posts - 366 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 149 of 344 12 May 2014 at 2:53pm | IP Logged |
James and Crush, thanks for the info. I will spend some time with all of them.
I am glad to be back home. The work trip was very busy with very long days. I did get to use Spanish in the cafeteria with one of the employees. Nothing special, just a few greetings and where they were from in Mexico. As far as organized study, it was terrible. I spent two hours on Wednesday in the airport and two hours on the plane returning home early Saturday morning. In between was a waste land. I spent 15 minutes each day just to say I studied every day. I had big plans Sunday to study but each time I started something would get in the way.
Today is a new day though and I am back on track!
110/340
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Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4136 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 150 of 344 13 May 2014 at 12:16am | IP Logged |
BOLIO wrote:
I am not a news person as most times it leaves me depressed, but I am really enjoying the Democracy Now website
that IguanaMon made me aware of recently. I can follow along with the reporter via text as she speaks like she is in
a spead reading contest. The content is really above me. However, I enjoy it and it helps me understand what my
goal is. |
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THANK YOU for this! Wow, do they talk fast. I mean - really, REALLY fast. But it's fabulous to have a 12 minute news
report with a full transcript - and every day, no less! I listened/read today's report, and I think I'll set aside 15
minutes after work every weekday for Democracy Now.
Thanks again...I love HTLAL!
Edited by Stelle on 13 May 2014 at 12:17am
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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 151 of 344 13 May 2014 at 12:50am | IP Logged |
In addition to Democracy Now! NHK World Spanish has newscasts in Spanish with transcripts (open audio link in new tab). Also there's Amnistia Internacional Podcast from Spain and the televised euronews español which follows the transcript, not exactly, but closely.
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Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4136 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 152 of 344 16 May 2014 at 12:31pm | IP Logged |
Gracias iguanamon! Those are some great resources!
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