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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5372 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 19 03 October 2012 at 8:49pm | IP Logged |
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Sounds like a great project!
Here are some random thoughts, which may or may not be useful. :-) If you want to hire a tutor, it's worth speaking to a couple of people first. One good place to look is Verbal Planet, which is where I found my amazing DELF B2 tutor. She cost about $10/hour more than the really cheap tutors, but she was worth it, because she was talented, well-trained and a polyglot herself. And she was happy to do the lessons entirely in French, which was exactly what I needed at the time. Also, don't hesitate to explain what you're looking for, and to scratch useless activities from the plan. most tutors will have some sort of standard lesson plan aimed at students who need everything to be spoon-fed. As for topics, I often wrote about either (1) something I did that day, or (2) something I had tried to talk about semi-successfully. This made it easy for me to find a topic, and I could use the new vocabulary and phrases almost immediately. When I felt really inspired, I'd write about something more complicated. Anki is a terrific tool, but my personal limit is about 10 new cards per day (sentences and cloze cards), and no more than 100 or so reviews. That takes up 20 to 40 minutes per day, which is enough to really help me over the long term, but not so much that it takes away from TV and reading. Good luck with your project! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jalds Newbie United States Joined 4798 days ago 23 posts - 31 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 10 of 19 04 October 2012 at 7:20am | IP Logged |
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emk,
Those are immensely useful thoughts, thank you for the advice and encouragement. I have found 2 potential tutors, one through Verbal Planet and the other is a teacher at a language school that offers online lessons. I'm hoping to find a tutor that can help me with conversations and writing (output activities) and isn't going to load me down with grammar exercises (why would I pay for that?). Next week I'm going to be out of the country and will take advantage of the opportunity to meet those tutors to determine if they would suit my needs. Thanks again for your advice. Oh, and I agree 100% regarding Anki. My daily reviews are usually only around 50, but since I do like to review the entire passage aloud, it does take a while. I struggled again today finding the right topic for a journal entry. One change I think I'm going to make is that if I feel like writing about something personal or political or something that simply isn't meant to be shared publicly, then I'm going to do it and keep it private vs. forcing myself to find something that would be entertaining to lang-8 readers. That seems like such a simple solution, but I've really had a hard time with that lately. I guess sometimes you have to give yourself permission to do what you want to do. Somewhere Katz from AJATT is smiling. Today is the 4th consecutive day of shadowing a 20 minute text. In this case, I shadowed the same text I used 3 days earlier and it went quite well. While I don't follow professor Arguelles' rules to the letter, I am finding this exercise helpful. Since it's only been 4 days, I'm not going to make any grand conclusions about shadowing, but I've noticed that in conversations certain phrases just come right out. There may be more effective ways of internalizing phrases, words or verbal reactions, but at first glance, shadowing seems to be a reliable method. Then again, I have listened to these texts many, many times before, so it could just be a case of massive input paying off. I'll let the linguists figure that out, I'm just happy it appears to be working. My final update: I had another conversation with a native speaker today and felt quite comfortable until...the other person got really excited telling a story and sped up to some ungodly speed. I think I understood about 8 words in heated 1 minute rant. I played along as though I was understanding because...well... you just can't ask a person to repeat an entire rant. In any case, it's clear my listening comprehension isn't as good as I thought it was. That's disheartening, but the conversation was about 45 minutes long, so at least I have that to hang my hat on. The roller coaster continues. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jalds Newbie United States Joined 4798 days ago 23 posts - 31 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 11 of 19 29 October 2012 at 9:40pm | IP Logged |
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Wow, it's been a long time since I've updated the log. October ended up being a really
busy month. Here are some updates: First, I kept up my shadowing efforts and I do think it's paying off. There are certain phrases that are becoming automatic and certain pronunciations that are getting ingrained in me. Having said that, I'm convinced (and this is probably obvious to many people) that shadowing doesn't do much for vocab. In other words, after I've read a text 6 or 7 times, my brain really isn't paying much attention to the vocab, I'm more or less just reciting the text with the recorded speaker. FYI, there were new constructions and words that I thought would become automatic because of the repeated reading, but that hasn't been the case yet. I think for that to happen, I need repeated exposure in varying contexts. I haven't met my goals in terms of writing (I had wanted to complete 18 journal entries this month) and I'm going to fall a little short. I'm currently at 12, but one entry is really long and should count as 3 or 4...lol. Enough of the excuses, I need to write more, period. I went to Panamá for 10 days and my Spanish held up reasonably well. I wasn't perfect, but I could definitely do most of the things I normally do at home. I was able to engage in arguments about politics, talk about daily life, meet new people etc. I have a friend that owns a bar there, so I was getting a lot of exposure to locals. Third, in preparation for meeting with my private tutor, which starts next week, I took a placement test and apparently, my level is C1! Only took me 28 months longer than Benny the Irish Polyglot, lol. Fluent In 30 Months, I think it sounds good. :) In all seriousness I'm absolutely shocked by that and frankly, I don't believe it's an accurate reflection of my true level. The placement test did not include an oral component, just grammar, writing, reading comprehension and oral comprehension. It's possible I'm at C1 in those areas, but anyone who's had a conversation with me would probably say i'm in the B1-B2 stage. In any case, the important point is that I'm making progress. I haven't had any evidence of that for awhile now, so it's really encouraging to know that I have progressed. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jalds Newbie United States Joined 4798 days ago 23 posts - 31 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 12 of 19 28 April 2014 at 2:04am | IP Logged |
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Restarting this log as I hope it aids me in improving Spanish. I´ve been very
consistent in doing something everyday for over 4 years now, but I´m still shy of the C1 level and am a little frustrated with my progress. I was reading through an old journal entry and found this sentence from November 2013: Me siento estancado. Como que no puedo avanzar con lo que estoy haciendo y necesito un cambio. Well, 6 months later I still feel stuck. This is one massive plateau. My response to the November plateau was to read like crazy and while I´m sure I have increased my passive vocabulary, I´m not satisfied with my current abilities or the rate of progress. I think I´ve been at the B2 threatening C1 level for over a year now. Arrgg! Enough. A couple of months ago there was a thread about finishing a language. When I first read it, I thought: there is no finishing a language. Well, now I understand the sentiment that may have been behind that post. There´s a point where even the most patient learner (whom I am not) asks, when will I be good enough to just live in this language comfortably? In any case, I decided to hire an online tutor and we start classes this coming week. I hope that gets me out of this rut. In the meantime, I have plenty of Anki reviews, a good book and a moderately interesting TV series waiting for me. In other words...more of the same. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jalds Newbie United States Joined 4798 days ago 23 posts - 31 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 13 of 19 29 April 2014 at 12:02am | IP Logged |
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Reinstating the "Phrase Bank"
My method for Anki is to copy and paste sentences or paragraphs from any content I find interesting (i.e. books, newspapers, magazines, blog posts and my podcast transcripts). While I limit myself to 10 cards per day, there are days where I can´t find 10 interesting items and in those cases I turn to my "Phrase Bank". As a general rule I'm happy to randomly encounter new constructions and new words. While I know I'll need to see several examples to truly cement those constructions and words in my vocabulary, extensive reading and consistent browsing of blogs and usually provide enough examples over time. There are however, some examples, that are just too rare. Others are just too interesting to me to wait another potential 3 months to see a 2nd example. In these cases, I'll go searching for examples and add those to the phrase bank. Today I saw the payoff of the phrase bank. I had a phone conversation with a hotel employee in Spanish in which I used a Puerto Rico saying, which I had only seen once in my 20+ books by Puerto Rican authors. The other person was impressed, and asked if I was Puerto Rican. I smiled to myself, knowing I had correctly internalized that saying thanks to the "Phrase Bank." I know it's not a big deal, but it's an event that indicated progress and validated one of my methods, and THAT is the hallmark of a good day. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Jalds Newbie United States Joined 4798 days ago 23 posts - 31 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 14 of 19 30 April 2014 at 1:09am | IP Logged |
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Had the first tutoring session this morning and really enjoyed it. We settled on a
format in which I will write a short story for every session (we're meeting 2X per week), which will be corrected by tutor. In addition, I have to select a current event topic which we can debate in class. Finally, there will be a short period at the end of every class to go over any random grammar questions I have. I'm pretty excited as I found I was able to converse much more smoothly than I had anticipated. What's odd is that the night before I couldn't even think in Spanish, I was just too tired and forcing my brain to string together sentences was an exercise in futility. Maybe I just needed to sleep? In any case, I'm convinced this is going to help me improve and that was the goal. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jalds Newbie United States Joined 4798 days ago 23 posts - 31 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 15 of 19 01 May 2014 at 12:12am | IP Logged |
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I just finished writing my first story, which I'll review with my tutor tomorrow. 2 days
into this new adventure and I'm already questioning what I've gotten myself into. Writing fiction is exhausting, particularly with such a short deadline. However, I did enjoy the process and I was especially pleased to find that my vocabulary was sufficient to not truly need a dictionary (I did use Linguee and Google to look up a couple of words to validate they were used correctly). I'll now need to do some preparation for the debate topic I've chosen for our session which is: The impact of foreigners on the local culture and economy of western Panama. It's a meaty topic and perhaps a bit risqué, but it genuinely interests me, so I´ve decided to throw caution to the wind. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jalds Newbie United States Joined 4798 days ago 23 posts - 31 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 16 of 19 01 May 2014 at 11:01pm | IP Logged |
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I had another good session with my tutor this morning. I really enjoy this format. It
allows me an opportunity to practice all of my "active" skills and learn about the local culture in ways that might be difficult as a tourist. The debate was really more of a discussion, where my tutor and I participated equally, since I was truly interested in the topic. My story was well received, which I was really pleased about, although, we've identified a new weakness: punctuation. It's a little embarrassing, but I had a couple of misplaced or even missing commas. Sigh. This language learning adventure never ends. :) I'm now off to the Dominican Republic for a weekend to attend a book fair and a couple of writing workshops. Hopefully I wont find myself in over my head. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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