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How can I make my plan better | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| rafi94 Diglot Newbie Poland Joined 4331 days ago 6 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Polish*, English | Message 1 of 11 28 October 2013 at 1:23am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Hey!
So I've learnt Spanish for few months now, probably more than a year actually, I had a lot of breaks during this time, used a lot od diffrent methods of learning but I feel like i need to make my plan some better. Finally. Anyway right now I am probably at A2 or something like that, can't really measure that but it's not important. The fact is I can't understand movies or texts for native speakers, I can only tell what it is about... mostly. So I want to make some plan for myself and change my habits of learning and I hope you guys can help me ;) So here's what i came up with. -Use duolingo(.com) for vocab - make something there every single day, I really enjoy using this site and I feel like it's great way to learn some new words but also for the grammar, ways of using some words/idioms etc. -Watch some movies/news or anything else dedicated to native speakers (with subtitles)- with checking the words that I don't know - not sure though either should i write them down to Anki so i can repeat them later or just check what they mean and after few times of seeing the word I'll remember it -Read something dedicated to native speakers - same question as above, should I write words I check to anki or not. -Write some notes on italki.com (site where u write note about anything and people correct your mistakes and also give some advices) - at least twice a week. -Assimil - I stopped after 30 lessons or so, gonna try it again. I mean i know it's great way to learn Spanish but after few lessons it just really bores me and I feel like learning should be funny, especially if I learn just for myself, not for passing some exams in school or something like that. -Listen to some Spanish songs, translate their texts, listen them few times a day for next two-three days, repeat. What else could I do? I know there are hundreds of topics about learning technics but it's just really hard to find something for yourself. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5523 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 11 28 October 2013 at 3:36am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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These all sound like pretty good ideas. Anything that involves exposing yourself to large amounts of enjoyable, fairly-comprehensible Spanish—while paying attention to some of the details—is likely to take you in the right direction. :-)
Many people will never have a magical breakthrough where everything becomes clear. (Some people on this forum have had such breakthroughs, but it's often because their skills were much more advanced in one area than another, and those skills suddenly transferred.) For me, learning French was more a process of picking up a few interesting details every day, which eventually added up to something quite significant. The tradeoff with reading and vocabulary is a bit tricky. On the one hand, you'll get a lot more out of a book once you get really immersed in it. And if you look up a word every 5 seconds, this probably won't happen, so it's worth reading fast. On the other hand, dumping a 1,000 words of high-frequency vocabulary into Anki can make a big difference at your level. A nice trick is underline unknown words and deal with them later. You can also highlight them on an ereader, or mark them with those tiny PostIt arrows. I use an ereader, and I mark entire sentences containing useful words, because I personally dislike single-word vocabulary cards. But some people love 'em. One thing that makes a big difference for many people is their first full-length book. It may take a while to find a book that "grabs" you, and which you can't put down. If you ever do find such a book, the first few hundred pages will make a big difference for your reading skills. You might look into Listening-Reading, or try to find parallel texts. In general, a lot depends on what kind of materials you enjoy, and how close you are to being able to handle easy native texts. It's possible to learn quite a bit when goofing off, if you're clever about it and put in some real hours. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6541 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 3 of 11 28 October 2013 at 9:40am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I notice that you've left conversation out of your plan - is there a reason for that? Also, there's not much information
about time in your post. For example, if you have a goal of reaching a certain level by a certain day, you will need to study a certain number of hours per week to accomplish that. I recommend tools like learning with texts, FLTR, lingQ etc to help with your reading and listening. They can save you a lot of time and frustration. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| rafi94 Diglot Newbie Poland Joined 4331 days ago 6 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Polish*, English | Message 4 of 11 28 October 2013 at 10:20am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Thanks emk! I guess the idea with full-length book would definitely work for me. I'm
gonna try to look for one. Might be hard though because of my language skill.
Well the problem is to find someone whom I could talk to. In my country there aren't too many native Spanish speakers and also not many people try to learn it so it's a little bit tricky to find someone. Also I thought about language exchange but again, not many people want to learn Polish and my English isn't well enough. I'm gonna look for someone but it just might be hard
I didn't mention hours because I don't have any goal like that. I learn Spanish just for my own satisfaction and because I really enjoy doing that. Also learning Spanish isn't and won't be my priority and sometimes I'll have to stop learning it for some time because - for example - I've to study more for my college exams or something like that. Of course that would be nice to reach for example B2 in one year time, but if i stop at B1 - I'll be fine with that.
Will try this out! Thanks for your help and wish me luck ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5523 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 11 28 October 2013 at 11:58am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
If you're not quite ready for a real book, there are several ways to tackle the problem. 1) Finish up Assimil. This should normally get you far enough that you have a fighting chance of reading an easy book with enough comprehension to understand something. 2) If you like Harry Potter, go to Pottermore and buy the Polish and Spanish ebooks of Harry Potter. These are available online, and they're DRM free, so you can use them with any ereader of your choice. There's also a Spanish audiobook, but you'll probably have to order it internationally and get it shipped. (Fortunately, your Amazon login should work normally on the international sites, so this is easier than it looks.) To use these, read a page (or just a paragraph) in Polish, then read the same paragraph in Spanish, and optionally listen to the audio. If you find any sentences with really useful vocabulary, just copy and paste the Spanish onto the front of an Anki card, the Polish on the back, and optionally an audio clip on the front! (It should be possible to copy and paste audio from Audacity to Anki.) Note that Harry Potter is actually pretty hard, so don't expect to understand it without a Polish translation handy. And don't bother to learn "fancy" vocabulary at first. 3) Consider uploaded a DRM-free ebook to a site like readlang. This will give you pop-up translations and vocabulary flash cards in context. I've never tried it, but it looks really promising. 4) Consider getting an ebook reader with a popup dictionary. This makes it easy to read a bit above your level in general. 5) Find a site with short, amusing snippets of Spanish, and look up any words you don't know. Stick the snippet on the front of an Anki card, and any necessary definitions on the back. If you don't mind an occasional bit of adult humor, try this for example. (I learned more of my casual French from the French version of this site than I'd care to admit.) Or look for your own. Also note that books tend to get much easier after the first few hundred pages. If you can find an easy book and understand just enough that you can enjoy reading it, keep going and things should get better. If you can get into the "flow" of reading, your brain will pick up and internalize all kinds of useful things.
Also consider looking for an online Skype tutor. If you don't mind using a central/south American variety of Spanish, you should be able to find some semi-affordable online tutors. And the nice thing about tutors is they're like to actually show up at the promised time, instead of sending you an apologetic email 3 hours later. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| rafi94 Diglot Newbie Poland Joined 4331 days ago 6 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Polish*, English | Message 6 of 11 28 October 2013 at 1:13pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Yea, I am going to start Assimil again but as I said in my first post it gets boring pretty fast for me.
This looks cool, wondering if this is free or u have to pay after adding some words like in lingq. For sure I'm gonna check this
Also thought about it. I think I can afford at least one hour per week.
Hmm I haven't thought about this but I guess this might be a good idea and also this looks like a really funny way to learn language. Thanks again for all your support 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4680 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 7 of 11 28 October 2013 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Thanks EMK! This site is awesome! I have just spent the last 2 hours collecting words and phrases in Spanish from this. It's great! Edited by BaronBill on 28 October 2013 at 4:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6588 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 8 of 11 28 October 2013 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Try GLOSS too, it's like semi-native materials. All lessons have recordings and full translations, click "source" on top. I wish it was available for Polish :-) Edited by Serpent on 28 October 2013 at 7:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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