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Spanish: The Final Frontier | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Jalds Newbie United States Joined 4798 days ago 23 posts - 31 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 1 of 19 01 October 2012 at 2:13am | IP Logged |
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Welcome to my journey. I've been studying Spanish for about 2.5 years and while I
suppose I've achieved basic fluency (I can read novels, watch TV and carry on a conversation with friends)I'm not what I would consider fluent. I feel as though I'm still in the interminable intermediate stage and it's time to cross over to the advanced stage. Inspired by a log by a member named EMK and my own desire to take a volunteer vacation in Latin America this December, I've decided to challenge myself to improve my Spanish as much as possible between now and mid December. In addition to my normal immersion activities, I'm going to do the following: 1 - I want to do more shadowing. I've always done this to a limited extent, but now I'm going to ramp things up a bit and shadow one 20 minute text per day for 30 days. 2 Stealing from EMK, I'm going to give journaling a try. I'm not likely to reach one journal entry per day for 30 days, so I'll sign up for a goal of 20 over the next 30 days. 3 - And again stealing from EMK, I'm going to hire a tutor, mostly as conversation practice, but if there's some academic work involved, then so be it. That's the basic plan, I have 77 days until the trip, let's see how far I can get. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jalds Newbie United States Joined 4798 days ago 23 posts - 31 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 2 of 19 01 October 2012 at 8:02am | IP Logged |
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1 day in, I shadowed a 20 minute podcast which seemed to go rather well. I knew the
1st half of the podcast well, so my performance might be tainted by my previous knowledge of the material, but the 2nd half was less known and I was able to do ok. The podcast I'm using is a political talk radio show. There aren't any callers, it's just 1 person giving his opinion on a variety of topics. I find that I can keep up with him pretty well until...he really gets excited. Then I start falling a behind. The exciting part is that my accent seemed to be ok. In fact there were times where I felt the "stereo" effect, where our voices were almost one. Then I had a short conversation with a friend on the phone and my accent just feel apart. I was slurring my words too much. I'm not sure what happened. I do find that I tend to speak well between 10AM and 7PM, Before or after that, my accent is embarrassingly bad given how much time I've spent listening to the language. To feel better, I watched an episode of a TV program that I like and have no problem understanding and then pushed it too far, watching a movie with a whole lot of street slang that left me in the dust. I understood about 60% of the scenes where the drug dealers are talking to each other. Anyway, I suppose those are the typical ups and downs of learning language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6460 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes  Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 3 of 19 01 October 2012 at 9:44am | IP Logged |
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For journaling, do you use lang-8? It's a great place. You write an entry and native speakers correct it for you. And of course, you correct other people's entries too. I've found it helpful.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jalds Newbie United States Joined 4798 days ago 23 posts - 31 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 4 of 19 02 October 2012 at 2:54am | IP Logged |
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Brun Ugle, I am going to use Lang-8 for the majority of my journal posts, although some
may just remain private if I don't feel like sharing the entry or if I feel it's too long. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jalds Newbie United States Joined 4798 days ago 23 posts - 31 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 5 of 19 02 October 2012 at 6:26am | IP Logged |
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Decent day today. I was able to get an essay posted onto Lang-8 and already received a
correction. Aside from a couple of minor mistakes, my writing seemed to be well received, so that was encouraging. The truth is, I enjoy writing once I get into the flow of it, but I've always found it difficult to consistently write in Spanish. Hopefully, this project will get me past that. However, I think it's is going to be particularly challenging using Lang-8 because I find it difficult to pick a subject. Some things I want to write about are just too personal, others are too political, others still would require a much longer essay than would seem to be ideal for Lang-8. I guess with experience, I'll figure out what works, but I spent about an hour reading different newspapers from my target countries looking for something to write about, before finally identifying a suitable subject. I'm not sure I want to do that every day. I also completed another 20 minute shadowing session of a well known text, which felt good. I had no problem with the speed and my accent "seemed" to be "OK", although without a recording it's difficult to judge. I have, on occasion, repeatedly recorded myself reading a short text until I got a version that sounded close to the original speaker. I should probably do that again, but it will have to wait until the weekend, when I have more time. Anyway, the rest of the night will be dedicated to getting more input (TV and reading). Oh, and I still have to finish my Anki reviews. I do believe in spaced repetition, but sometimes it's a real pain 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5231 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 6 of 19 02 October 2012 at 8:27am | IP Logged |
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I've had a hard time coming up with good writing topics as well. Someone posted this blog
and I found this post with suggested topics which helps : Nothing to write about? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jalds Newbie United States Joined 4798 days ago 23 posts - 31 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 7 of 19 02 October 2012 at 6:39pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the link sctroyenne, that's a wealth of writing topics. You may have just
saved me an hour a day. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jalds Newbie United States Joined 4798 days ago 23 posts - 31 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 8 of 19 03 October 2012 at 7:30am | IP Logged |
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It's day 3 into this project and I'm starting to get into a routine. At lunch my mind
was automatically prepared to write my 3rd consecutive journal entry, which while I was happy with the end result, I was surprised how much I struggled to communicate a couple of things that are so simple in my native language. I know it's been said before, but writing really does identify your weaknesses. I also had 1.5 hour conversation with a friend in Latin America by phone and overall, I was pleased with how I did. I was able to speak reasonably well in the early going and was able to defend myself in an argument and get my point across, so I think I have another proof point that I´m somewhat competent in this language, but...after a while I started to get a little sloppy. Some masculine nouns got feminine adjectives and at one point my mind went completely blank trying to remember a certain phrase. The good news is that I was able to use self deprecating humor to get out of it. I also felt pretty good late in the conversation when my friend was describing a situation in which his friend was describing me to others and said I was gringo, but my Spanish was good. I know enough to take that with a big grain of salt, he probably meant that my Spanish was better than other gringos he´s met that just come and speak English, but I´ll take it as an unintended compliment because otherwise, my ego won´t be able to survive this language learning journey. :) Beyond that, I was able to listen to a couple of news podcasts, which were fairly easy to understand. I usually listen to 2 podcasts a day and I might start to listen to more amateur podcasts. I found a site which contains old podcasts of college students who discuss news topics, but talk in a very informal and often vulgar manner. Those guys are a little more difficult to understand, so if I can get used to their speech, I ´ll probably be better off when talking to random people on the street outside of the US. I haven´t done my shadowing for the day, but I´m going to get to that shortly. I hate doing verbal exercises late at night as my speaking abilities just aren´t as good, but I do want to keep up the routine. Oh, and I haven´t finished my Anki reviews yet. Arrg!! It´s 10:30 at night I´ve still got 43 reviews to do. I´m off to look for some caffeine. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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