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2015 Goals and Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4977 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 34 03 December 2014 at 3:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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This log is for tracking my goals and progress for 2015. The past few months I've had a
bit of wanderlust with French and German and lost track of my main Spanish goals. My Spanish has suffered a bit because of it. So, it's time to get back on track. Spanish Goals Continue to strive for B2 in Spanish. I'm currently around high A2/low B1 and need more vocabulary. I'm a little undecided on exactly how to get there. Suggestions are welcome.
German Goals Since discovering that my ancestry is a large part German, I became interested in learning about Germany and the language. I'd like to continue doing so but in a limited way. I don't have any real need for this language other than experiencing more about my heritage. I'm going to set an easy goal of reaching A1 in 2015. I don't think this will interfere much with my Spanish, if it does I will drop this goal.
General Goals
Edited by bryanpeabody on 16 March 2015 at 6:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4977 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 34 04 December 2014 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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I know this log was for 2015 goal tracking but why wait, no time like the present to
get started... Spent my study time yesterday and this morning going through some of MT Advanced, with most of my focus on the command tense and the subjunctive. Most of it came back without much problem. There are a couple of cases in the command tense that tripped me up but I will review those tonight and get them straightened out. I think MT gets some kind of pleasure out of tricking students :) Tonight I will see if I can find any Spanish dubbed tv shows that I enjoy. No German in the past couple of days. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4977 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 34 08 December 2014 at 3:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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This weekend I was able to get a lot of practice in. I continued with MT Advanced
Spanish, focusing on the future and past. Neither of which caused any major issues. I do need to review a couple of the irregular verbs forms of hacer and decir. I'm really enjoying the Spanish language sports pack I got on my satellite provider and I'm finding it's worth the monthly price ($5) for Spanish practice. Mostly I've been focused on matches from La Liga (Spain) but occasionally will watch ones from Argentina too. It's interesting to see the differences in the language between the two countries. I usually count watching the matches as practice time since I'm listening to authentic Spanish being spoken by the commentators. I can understand a little, mostly words and phrases, here and there. The thing that I find most useful are the signs around the stadiums and the commercials. Commercials are perfect real world practice and I can generally understand 90%+ of what is said and what is written on the screen. Saturday night I had a Skype session with my Friend from Ecuador. I felt that I did a pretty good job of speaking and listening. Probably the best speaking session that I've had in a while. Last night I read for about 45 minutes. I've been enjoying some Spanish books written by Alvaro Para Pinto. The current one, El hospital loco, is a bit more advanced than I would have thought based on the title. I'm noticing the use of the subjunctive rather frequently in the book, which makes me think that it might be around a B2 level book. Finally, I started thumbing through an A2 DELE book that I happen to have. Since I'm striving for passing the B1, I will probably end up looking for example tests or a book specifically for the B1. But for now, this will give me an idea of difficulty and how the exam is laid out. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4977 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 34 13 December 2014 at 6:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's been a few days since the last post, so time for an update.
I had a fairly productive week. I've been plugging away at Advanced MT Spanish. I'm repeating disc 3, I had forgotten how much was covered in that 3rd disc. It's actually been helping during reading and IM chats this week. I've seen a lot of what is covered in real life Spanish this week. Yesterday I went on a mission to find a DVD with Spanish audio and subtitles that would be enjoyable. I settled on a DVD of Family Guy. I've been ripping the discs into my Plex server so I can watch them on the Roku's I have around the house. So far I have been watching an episode first in English so I'm familiar with it and then in Spanish audio with Spanish subtitles. Gradually, I'm planning to switch over to only watching in Spanish. I've noticed errors between spoken Spanish and the Spanish subtitles. Sometimes they are completely different for a sentence or two. I also have been working on finishing my current Spanish book, El Hospital Loco. It's a little more advanced than what I have previously been reading but it's been enjoyable and I'm learning new words and seeing the subjunctive used a lot. Which can only be helpful for improving my reading skills. Friday's are "viernes españolas" between my friend and I. We use Whatsapp to text and on Fridays we only write in Spanish. Mostly. The exceptions are if I don't understand something or can't express something in Spanish. This Spanish Friday was excellent. I was really proud of the amount I could understand and being able to respond with few errors. I'm definitely seeing an improvement in comprehension and writing. And finally, I've been investigating how to achieve the 2015 goal of A1 in German. A German guy I follow on YouTube (Get Germanized is the channel, check it out) suggested using Babbel.com in one of his videos. For the A1 to maybe A2ish level, I think it would work well. I may start to give that a try. I'll write more about that in future posts. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4977 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 34 14 December 2014 at 6:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Focusing on drilling past tense verbs today. conjuguemos.com is a nice site to
practice and it's free. I'm hovering around 90%+ on regular verbs in the past tense. But irregular ones, I'm around 60%. I can't spell them well. I found a B1 vocabulary course on memrise today. I'm going to give that a try and see if it's any good. I'm not sold on memorizing vocab by rote but I will reserve judgement until I try it. Later I will read some more and maybe watch an episode of Family Guy in Spanish, if time allows. Hasta mas tarde... 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4657 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 6 of 34 14 December 2014 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hola! Yo también estoy estudiando español y me encanta. Creo que mi nivel es bastante parecido al suyo. Quizá a usted le gustaría este documental sobre el poblamiento de América precolombina: link. El español hablado en ello me parece bastante claro y mas lento que de costumbre.
Buena suerte con sus estudios! Edited by tastyonions on 14 December 2014 at 6:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4977 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 34 17 December 2014 at 6:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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@tastyinions Gracias, voy a verlo ahora!
A few updates.... The Memrise B1 vocab is actually going pretty well. I seem to be recalling the words that I haven't seen before so I'll continue on with it. I'm really enjoying watching padre de familia. I don't understand all of the spoken words but I usually get enough to understand the gist of the plot. There are many differences between what is spoken in Spanish and what the Spanish subtitles say. Still not so much that it's ruining the experience but enough that it's noticeable. I grabbed a cheap, older season of The Simpsons from Amazon last night. We'll see if it's any better. I've wrapped up my second go through of MT Advanced Spanish. I like having an audio course for my commute to work so I can get in speaking practice and drills. Plus it's an easy way to get an hour of Spanish each day without much effort to find the time. So, I started doing LSLC and have gone through the first 8 lessons. Very simple so far but I do like that it moves faster than Pimsleur. I started looking at example DELE B1 exam papers. The readings are actually a bit harder than I expected so there is some work to do in preparing for the exam. I think I have reached that upper A2/lower B1 plateau that I've read about. Lately, I've been pretty negative about my Spanish progress. I suppose it's because I'm not seeing as much progress as before. I seem to be plugging along and staying at the same level. Edited by bryanpeabody on 18 December 2014 at 5:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4657 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 8 of 34 18 December 2014 at 1:33pm | IP Logged | ||
A mí me pasa lo mismo. Creo que es debido a que no tengo tiempo suficiente para estudiar diariamente. Trato de escuchar un poco todos los días mientras conduzco pero eso no no es suficiente cuando uno tiene un nivel de principiante o intermedio. Pues debo aprovechar plenamente de mi tiempo libre los fines de semana. Edited by tastyonions on 18 December 2014 at 1:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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