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Triple Jumping into Spanish - My Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| jumpman222 Newbie United States garnermccloud.com Joined 3858 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 9 07 March 2014 at 6:58am | IP Logged |
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Since I was a triple jumper in high school and college, I'm deciding to continue with
this "approach of three" as I begin my journey to basic fluency and beyond in Spanish. Why I'm Doing This: My girlfriend, who is Mexican, is graduating from college in the first week of June and her relatives from Mexico are visiting her and speak zero english. And I don't want to be that completely gringo boyfriend. So my goal is to at least be able to understand them if they try to make jokes about me! Haha, well I just want to be able to have a decently simple conversation with them to get to know more about them. It would make me happy and mean a lot to my girlfriend. My Spanish Background: I took 4 classes of Spanish in high school, and one semester in college. They took me through all of the tenses and I have a decent amount of vocab under my belt. But I'm EXTREMELY rusty. And even when I was taking those classes, I was never able to speak or listen well. I would put my current level at an A1, and I would put my highest level in the past at a novice A2. My Goal: To get to a B1 level in listening/speaking by June 1st. My Approach of Three:
Also, Spanish TV streaming on my pc at all times of the day to get passive listening immersion, and 15 min of Anki cards using the 1001 Most Common words in Spanish Deck My Thoughts: I think the tutoring sessions will be the most beneficial as it will help me with my speaking skills (mistakes and accent) and trying to comprehend a native speaker. Platiquemos will most likely help me get to "automaticity" so I don't have to think every time I want to say something. The Spanish Dubbed TV/Movies will be relaxing and fun while helping with my listening comprehension. It's a pretty intense schedule, but it has a hard deadline which is less than 3 months from now, so it is only temporary. I will most likely fall into a 2 hours a day type schedule after the deadline so I don't burn out and continue on my way. I'm going to to update this log daily so stay tuned! Edited by jumpman222 on 07 March 2014 at 6:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| MixedUpCody Senior Member United States Joined 5198 days ago 144 posts - 280 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 2 of 9 07 March 2014 at 7:29am | IP Logged |
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Welcome to the forum, jumpman. When I saw it was your first post, I was going to give you advice, but after reading your post it became evident that you have everything pretty much in order. I was pretty much in your shoes in November, and I've gotten myself to B1 over the last 4 months by studying intensely, so it can definitely be done. The thing that helped me the most was indeed iTalki tutoring, and also Destinos. If you get past your Anki deck, there is 5000 most frequent that I used and found incredibly helpful. My only other suggestion would be to read whenever you can. If you're on FB, it is pretty easy to switch several pages in your feed to Spanish so you can get constant exposure. Also, my Kindle has been indispensable in studying Spanish, because you can get a SP/EN dictionary for it and read things above your level, which is pretty nice. The first thing I read once I had the 3000 most frequent words was La ciudad de las bestias, which is at about the 7th grade level. Good luck on your journey, look forward to reading.
Cody 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| jumpman222 Newbie United States garnermccloud.com Joined 3858 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 9 07 March 2014 at 7:58am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the suggestions Cody! Yeah, I changed chrome, facebook, and my phone over to
spanish earlier this week so I can get constant exposure, and I can already see it helping my vocab. I'll check out that Anki deck too, I can never have too much vocab. I watched Destinos in high school, and recently tried watching it again a couple months ago. I got up to episode 15 and understood most of the dialogue, but the story was just too boring for me. Maybe I'll give it another shot. I definitely need to add some reading to my approach, but I feel like if I do any more, I will burn out. Maybe I'll try to read some during my train travels on the weekend. Do you think La Ciudad de las bestias is worth giving a shot even if I only understand half the dialogue? Or should I try something less advanced? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| MixedUpCody Senior Member United States Joined 5198 days ago 144 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 4 of 9 07 March 2014 at 8:21am | IP Logged |
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I would only recommend reading something where you don't know a lot of the words if you have a Kindle (or some other electronic solution, I see you're a developer, so I'm sure you can figure something out). Also, there are plugins available for Firefox that allow you to double click on a word and get it's definition, which is very helpful when reading El pais or BBC Mundo. If you want more traditional books I would start with graded readers like this one. You're absolutely right about the danger of burnout, I've been there and it can really derail your learning, but maybe you can use some of your 2 hours of TV for reading, there have been some studies that suggested that reading helps listening comprehension, so don't think of it as reduced listening practice, but as an alternate attack. As to Destinos being boring, you're absolutely right. I just gritted it out but hey, I was a 2 miler, not a triple jumper =).
2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5317 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 5 of 9 07 March 2014 at 1:41pm | IP Logged |
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Cool. Seeing something about triple jumping got me interested. I was a triple jumper in high school too, but had to quit it due to too many sprained ankles so I stuck with the high jump in college. There is something about jumpers... I'll bet you reach your goal.
Parallel books are a great way to read efficiently. There are a lot of them. I have not read too many, but since you are interested in Mexican Spanish you might try this one. I have heard it is pretty good and a fairly low level. They say it has a lot of well known stories from Mexico. You can also try Los Simpson in Spanish. The dubbing is Mexican. After a little while it is fairly easy to follow. If you have seen the show before it might be easier for you to follow than it was for me. This site does not have subtitles, but I would not be surprised if you can find a version with subtitles. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4086 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 6 of 9 07 March 2014 at 8:31pm | IP Logged |
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I highly recommend Veintemundos if you want to read, but can't commit to a novel. It has short articles with audio
and links to related Spanish-language content. Good stuff! VeinteMundos I think you're going to progress very quickly if you spend an hour with an italki tutor every day! Let me know if you're looking for any recommendations - I've worked with some very good Spanish tutors on italki. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5807 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 7 of 9 08 March 2014 at 6:16am | IP Logged |
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I think you will be surprised how helpful Platiquemos is. That's the only course i ever did in Spanish (after Pimsleur I & II and Michel Thomas, which were very brief introductions to the language) and when i finished it i had very little trouble actually speaking Spanish. Speaking it every day in your tutoring sessions will help a lot. If you can keep that pace up, you'll definitely make quick progress. I finished Platiquemos in about 9 months at 3 hours a day, though there was about a 2-month period where i set it aside.
Good luck, si tienes alguna duda no dudes en preguntar :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| jumpman222 Newbie United States garnermccloud.com Joined 3858 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 9 08 March 2014 at 7:08am | IP Logged |
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So my daily Spanish tutoring doesn't start until next week, so I can't report on that
progress. I was able to complete the first run throughs of units 3-9 of Platiquemos which is about what I think I should have accomplished. They were fairly simple as I have previous knowledge that helps me with them. The quick pronouncitation was hard but I was able to get most of it down. Will continue with first runs of units 10-15 tomorrow. I dunno when I will hit the wall but it will probably come out of nowhere. I also watched 6 episodes of Dragon Ball Z dubbed in Spanish. I love this show and could watch it in Spanish for 8 hours a day. It is definitely helping my comprehension as I recognize words that I have learned in other settings. Thanks for all of your suggestions. They will definitely help me on this journey. Tune in for tomorrow's log! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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