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Lorren’s Language Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4243 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 212 10 April 2013 at 11:59pm | IP Logged |
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This is the first entry of my language log, to document my progress. My current focus will be Spanish, as I'm going to Mexico in about a month.
In the past, I took 3 semesters of Spanish in college. My plan is to go through Rosetta Stone V3 levels 1 to 5 (I know a lot of people don't like it but for my learning style, it seems to work better than anything else that I've tried); I am also reading at least one newspaper article every day, and am using Google to research any questions that I have. I've been writing down in a notebook things that I come across that may be hard to just "get" intuitively. I'm a little over 25% of the way through Rosetta Stone Level 2, which is currently covering the past tense, both of regular verbs and of the past tense of ir and dar. It's also going over reflexive pronouns. This is approximately the point that I left off with my University courses, so most of what I run into after this point will be mostly new material and not review. Yesterday I read a newspaper article on how the ambassador to Brazil was saying that everything looked pretty normal in the capital of North Korea, despite the tensions going on. While there were a lot of words that I didn't understand, I was able to get the main message that the article was trying to convey. As I continue to practice, I expect that I will understand more and more over time. Edited by Lorren on 10 October 2013 at 8:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5367 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 2 of 212 12 April 2013 at 3:41pm | IP Logged |
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Where will you be going in Mexico and what will you be doing there? It sounds like a great opportunity. I have never used Rosetta Stone, but I agree with the masses that it does not seem like a great program. I hear it has gotten a lot better though. What is your learning style that makes you like it? Anyway, good luck with your studies and trip... and interesting article on brookelorren.com/blog
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| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4243 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 3 of 212 15 April 2013 at 11:21pm | IP Logged |
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I'm only going to be there one day, but it's as good an excuse to get better at the language as any. My husband argues that we'll be in the tourist areas anyway, and everybody will speak English... and? That doesn't mean that I can't speak Spanish while I'm there. I'm a "when in Rome" kinda person when it comes to languages, or at least I try.
What do I like about Rosetta Stone? I think because it actually gets me thinking in the target language, rather than thinking in English and translating it. While I can say that I've never reached a high level of fluency in any language, I have a lot of practice learning them... 6 years of German in middle and high school, 1 year of high school Russian, 3 semesters of college Spanish, and 3 quarters of college Italian while living in Italy (but working on a US military base). Out of the 10 years of formal instruction in various languages, only my time spent using RS has had me thinking in the language and making me think that I might actually be able to learn it - although after six years of German, I guess that you could say that I was decent in it, but I never really thought in the language or anything. V3 is a lot better than the older versions. I understand all of the sentences. My challenge right now is verb tenses and reflexive pronouns. There seem to be two past tenses of verbs, and I'm having a hard time figuring out when to use the reflexive pronouns. We don't really use them in English. I think that they're referring to the object of the sentence, and for the sentences I'm using, it seems as if they're only using le and les, depending on whether you're referring to singular or plural. What then, are lo and los? I think that I've found a site that explains it though. The advantages (for me) of using RS is that it helps me think in the language and understand it in real time (I'm not very good at thinking on my feet). The disadvantage, although they're better on the grammar thing than in V2, is that sometimes the explanations are lacking and I feel like I need a little help. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4243 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 212 17 April 2013 at 11:51am | IP Logged |
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After researching lo, les, le, etc., I can understand it a bit better. I'm far from mastering its use, but at least it's starting to make a little more sense.
Newspaper headlines are beginning to mostly make sense to me. They're often full of cognates, words that I've been learning, or words that I learned years ago at some point, like terremoto. The content in the articles is harder to understand, but I'm sure that will come if I keep at it. I've been finding movie trailers on YouTube to watch as well. I have about four weeks left to study before I leave; while I won't be in Mexico right away, I don't think that I'll be doing much studying while on vacation. I've been doing about one lesson a day, so I'll probably be able to finish level 3 before I go. I was afraid that things might get a little more difficult once I started entering territory that I was unfamiliar with, but so far, that doesn't seem to be the case. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4243 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 212 19 April 2013 at 12:59pm | IP Logged |
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I'm three lessons away from finishing Rosetta Stone Spanish Level 2, which I will probably finish this weekend. While I'm still running into vocabulary that I have encountered at one point or another, much of the grammar is new to me. Tomorrow I will review a web page on the "imperfect tense" (jugaba/trabajaba etc.). I encountered this for the first time about 8 lessons ago, and I sort of figured out that it meant things that happened a long time ago vs. the other past tense, which you would use when talking about something that you did a few minutes ago or yesterday, but I think that actually seeing and writing down the conjugations of regular ending verbs and a few of the more often used irregular verbs would help.
I was surprised when I looked up the article on the "imperfect tense" that the web site considers this to be "intermediate Spanish"; I suppose though that we either never or barely covered this tense in the three semesters of college Spanish that I took in college, so perhaps. It just seems weird to me because I've only been working on this for about a month, this time around. I've made a lot of progress though. Today I read a Mexican newspaper article about all the developments in the terrorist attacks going on in the US, and I understood quite a lot. If I continue to make this kind of progress, I should have no problem reading them after finishing all five levels. I'm sure that I'll have to look up some words, but my daughter still occasionally has to do that with English, and sometimes I'll encounter a very obscure English word that I need to look up. The lesson that I finished today, RS Level 2/Unit 4/Lesson 1, partly dealt with going out to eat at a restaurant. That is something that I have planned for my day in Mexico, so it should come in handy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4243 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 6 of 212 20 April 2013 at 11:34am | IP Logged |
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Today I finished RS L2 Unit 4/Lesson 2, and started working on Lesson 3. I also watched some YouTube videos. I had a little trouble picking out when to use sonrier vs. rier, but the internet came to the rescue again; evidently, sonrier needs an indirect object.
Lately, the grammar section seems to be the most tricky for me. Early on, it was pronunciation, then writing (those darned accents). Perhaps the difficulty with grammar is that I'm mostly in uncharted territory now. In a way, I think that it will be a challenge to not forget a lot of the vocabulary, but a lot of it seems to be sticking. I was thinking about packing my suitcase, and while it did take me a little while to think of the word maleta, and I wasn't sure whether it was correct or not, when I checked, it was correct. It took me longer to remember the word for toothpaste. Not that I'm going to be shopping for toothpaste while I'm there, but I do want to have a good grasp of the language. I suppose cementing the vocabulary will take the longest. Today's events in the news reminded me of one of the reasons why I'm so interested in learning languages at this time (other than the fact that I love languages). Yes, it's going to be really great being able to understand more than I ever have before when I go to Mexico, but there's a lot of practical reasons to learn other languages as well. I work from home as a blogger (mostly politics and religion) and a designer (t-shirts, phone cases, cards, etc.). Knowing other languages will allow me to do my work in more than one language. If my Russian wasn't rusty as anything, I would have been able to watch the terrorist's YouTube videos and blog about what they say; that would have made an interesting post (I do plan on starting to re-learn/improve my Russian in the second half of the year). It's going to be exciting putting my improved language skills to work in the upcoming months. Edited by Lorren on 20 April 2013 at 11:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4243 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 212 22 April 2013 at 12:59pm | IP Logged |
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I finished level 2 today and started level 3. I tried watching a short cartoon "El Gato en Botas Y Las Tres Diablos" yesterday, and a lot of the dialog just flew by me, although I picked up a phrase here or there. I feel like I've come quite a ways, but I have such a long way to go.
My husband plans on going through the course once he finishes his papers for law school. He thinks that he's going to catch up to me. I wish him luck with that. It will be good to have someone to practice with though. Right now it's just me; sometimes I occasionally throw in a word or two at my kids too. My friends that are going with me say I'll have to be the translator. Haha, at least we won't really be doing too much that will require much translation. Although I did learn the word for "rent" today. I don't think that we'll have any plans to rent anything, but if we wanted to rent a beach umbrella or something, at least I'll know the word for it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4243 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 8 of 212 24 April 2013 at 6:19am | IP Logged |
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I'm fairly excited about a new idea that I had, that is available to me because I've been improving my Spanish. I have one design that I sell regularly in English for children's birthdays, on shirts, stickers, and buttons. I thought to myself today "why don't I make a Spanish version of the design?" I did some research, and I don't think that the particular market is very competitive. I don't know if there is a cultural difference that will make a difference in sales, but I figure that at least in the US, many Spanish speaking Americans like a lot of the things that English speaking Americans do, so I do believe that I will see some sales. I'm not sure how well the design will do outside of the US, but if I do see some sales there, that would be a bonus.
Yesterday I started Rosetta Stone Level 3. I was shown pictures of people jumping off of a fence, or climbing off of a table. Those were some of the very first ideas you learn to speak in V1/V2 of RS (the pictures are different and the sentences take advantage of the fact that the learner already is familiar with a lot more words and grammatical constructions). It really makes more sense to put them here; after all, what is more important learn to say first: the girl is jumping off the table, or what is your name and where are you from? Also, we don't have to go over phrases like "the boy is under the ball." Seriously, outside of the old RS or discussing it, I have never uttered that sentence in my life. While I probably will never have to tell my English-speaking hijo not to jump on the bed in Spanish (unless I'm also using English with him to help teach him), it's something that I might hear in real life. More useful. Level 3/Unit 1/Lesson 2 talks about things in the home like dishes, cleaning, vacuuming, and sweeping. While it's not something that I will need to use on my trip to Mexico, those are words that I would think that most people would want to learn if they actually want to know the language well. It also gives me another idea for a design that lots of people have done in English, but not in Spanish. Perhaps learning Spanish will have more uses than I originally imagined? I've started to look at the Spanish versions of messages that I see places to see how much I can understand from them. Generally, the English version is right next to it, so I'm not totally lost. I took mi hija to the doctor's office yesterday, and was reading the "Cobre su tos" sign about covering up your coughs. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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