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 Language Learning Forum : Members profiles |  | |
| Dagger Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4323 days ago 5 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 1 of 4 15 January 2013 at 3:08am | IP Logged |
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Hello everyone!
My name is Rusty. I've been learning Spanish for 2 years. It all started because of a girl, but I continue to study the language because I love it. I also like to travel and there are so many cool countries nearby where Spanish is the primary language. I'll give some history here in case it can help other learners. I started my studies 2 years ago with the Pimsleur series. I went through all 4 levels. It got really hard about halfway through the first level and I remember having headaches on a regular basis. About the time I got to level 2, I took a two week trip to Chile. That was extremely difficult and I only managed the most basic of communications. I remember getting a haircut and I couldn't understand anything the barber said. I told him, "I want it the same but shorter". Miraculously, everything turned out well. When I got back I continued with Pimsleur and also started Michel Thomas. I don't remember what all the Thomas courses were (basic, advanced, and language builder?), but I went through all of them. That took me through to the Spring of 2011. At that point I started reading a lot and trying to watch TV and listen to the radio. The reading was the easiest... The other two were next to impossible. I had a Puerto Rican neighbor who would come over and drink a couple beers with me and teach me things too. Around that time, I started dating a native Spanish speaker and she moved in with me for 6 months. That was probably the worst thing that happened to my studies. We mostly spoke in English the whole time, since obviously we were trying to make the relationship work... not conduct Spanish class. The funny thing is that I learned more grammar from her based on her mistakes in English than anything she tried to teach me about Spanish: I got down from the car, I drank a pill, I have hot, I put me nervous, etc... Thinking back on it, I actually did learn a lot of grammar that way. :) 6 months later, she moved out and I decided to begin studying in earnest. I got a flash card app for my iPhone that came with thousands of basic vocabulary words and expressions. I remember having dreams about that app. I was using it anytime I had a few spare minutes. Sometimes I would sit and go through it for hours before bedtime. Around this time I also started listening to the Notes in Spanish podcasts at the intermediate level. They were really difficult, but after listening to an episode 4 or 5 times I could pick out words and get a general sense of the meaning of the episode. I continued this, flash cards, radio, watching TV, and reading until about March of 2012. At this point, I could understand the podcasts pretty well (and had moved up to their Advanced level) and miraculously I was beginning to follow shows on the TV. At this point, I signed up on a language exchange site and met the most amazing partner. She's a geneticist who is very serious about learning English for her job. We've been talking twice a week over Skype ever since. We do an hour session in English and then an hour session in Spanish. I met some other folks, but I don't have enough time to do more sessions per week, so I exchange emails with them. In my opinion, emails are the best way to improve your vocabulary and grammar. You throw out your best attempt and the other person corrects it. You have a hard copy now to study from. Plus, you get to see their writing to learn from. The conversations are important for a different reason. Rather than correct each other a lot, we let the conversation flow. We only correct if something really impairs the ability to understand. This really helps a lot with the confidence to speak the language and to "get in the groove". At some point this fall, I reached a level of fluency where it's boring to read/watch things that I'm not interested in. For example, I used to watch telenovelas because I was interested in devouring any Spanish I could get a hold of. Now, I can't bear to watch them. At this point, I've stopped studying per se. I just read things I'm interested in and make a note when I don't understand something so I can look it up later. I also watch programs and movies that interest me, but I don't bother noting anything. I just try to keep up. I generally can understand anything I watch now, unless it is from Argentina or Chile. Even then, I get the gist of it even though I don't understand everything that is said. I also continue my wonderful language exchanges, more because I've made great friends, rather than for learning. The one last thing I do which I consider to be a form of study is to listen to songs while reading the lyrics. I think understanding songs is the final frontier. I really enjoy doing this. So here I am 2 years later. I consider myself fluent, though not at native levels. I can read at the same pace in Spanish as I can in English. I can watch and enjoy movies, though I have trouble with certain accents and regional variations in vocabulary. I suppose it's been 1.5 years, since I consider that 6 months with the girlfriend as wasted time with respect to learning the language. At this point, my goals are to continue becoming more natural in the language and to pick up cool new verbs and terms along the way. Thanks for reading me introduction! I hope to contribute on the forums. Rusty 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5252 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 2 of 4 15 January 2013 at 3:19am | IP Logged |
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¡Bienvenido al foro!, Dagger. Great intro! Looking forward to your posts. Do you have any plans to learn any other languages or are you looking to improve your Spanish? You'll find the forum to be a good place for advice and help
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Dagger Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4323 days ago 5 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 3 of 4 15 January 2013 at 3:48am | IP Logged |
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My main goal is to get as advanced as possible in Spanish. However, my Skype friend is interested in
Portuguese so we may try to tackle it together. One thing I meant to mention in my intro, but forgot: I have a difficult time translating. It's easy for me to settle into one track or the other (English or Spanish) and think in that language. However, I find it very difficult, for example, to have someone tell me something in Spanish and then for me to translate that real-time to someone in English. I'd like to improve that ability. Likewise, it is bothersome to have an English program on the background while reading/speaking Spanish and vice versa. A lot of my friends switch effortlessly and I'm jealous of that. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6693 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 4 16 January 2013 at 4:29pm | IP Logged |
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Some find it easy to translate, and for others each language is so to say learned from scratch and stays isolated like an island in a big ocean. For me it is natural to see languages as more or less variants on one theme, and translating back and forth between them is part of the game. But both kinds of learners can get far. Edited by Iversen on 16 January 2013 at 4:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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