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2015 Goals and Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5254 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 9 of 34 18 December 2014 at 4:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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You are doing well, bryanpeabody. The intermediate plateau can be frustrating, I know. The good thing about Spanish is that there are plenty of resources, even for free, to help. I see so few Spanish-learners taking advantage of Veinte Mundos, the free online Spanish "magazine" with interesting, downloadable to pdf, articles from all over the Spanish-speaking world. Each article has free (10-12 minutes) mp3 audio accompanying it and hover over definitions for highlighted text. It would be a great way to break into native material and an opportunity to learn new and varied vocabulary about a wide range of subjects. There are plenty of articles in the archive I linked to.
You can combine Veinte Mundos with some excellent, free, formal studies. The Centro Virtual Cervantes (from Spain) Aveteca has thorough, multimedia exercises tailored to CEFR level. The exercises are in monolingual Spanish, but don't let that worry you at all- it's designed for learners. They also have short, graded readings (without audio) available at CVC Lecturas Paso a Paso separated into beginner, intermediate and advanced. Edited by iguanamon on 18 December 2014 at 4:21pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4977 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 10 of 34 18 December 2014 at 5:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Count me among those that didn't know about Veinte Mundos. I will definitely check it
out. And the other ones you mentioned too. I'm especially interested in the CEFR level resources you mentioned. Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4977 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 34 22 December 2014 at 7:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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I had a fairly productive Spanish weekend. I'm moving along with LSLC. It's a shame I
didn't give this a try sooner, I'm really enjoying it. I remember looking at the website a long time ago and thinking it looked like a scam. It's really too bad that they don't market this better, it's really a nice audio program. Anyway, I'm up to lesson 20 and will continue with the speaking and drill practice during drive time. Last week I was focused on using Anki to get the irregular past tense verbs cemented into my brain. Today during lunch I did a 5 minute drill on conjuguemos.com and I'm hovering around 80%. I'm happy with that. A 20 point change from last time. If I can get up to 90%-ish this week, I will call it done. TV watching has been going ok. I've watched a few episodes of Family Guy and The Simpsons. Both suffer from mismatched subtitles/spoken Spanish audio. It isn't a huge problem but it would have been nice if they matched. Sunday I picked up a Kindle deal on an Agatha Christie book in Spanish. I have to admit that it isn't much fun. The verbs I can generally follow but there are a lot of unknown vocab/phrases. I'm debating on whether to just press forward hoping it gets easier or just move on to something else. I remember EMK saying the first 100 pages are the most difficult and afterwards it gets easier. Either way, failing at reading is a bit demoralizing. This weekend I played around with Babbel.com for my 2015 A1 German goal. It's not bad, I kind of like it. My concern is whether or not they present things enough times for them to "stick". As I'm just playing with the free version, I can only see the first level of each course so it's hard to judge. Supposedly, per the FAQ, there are around 3000 words in the entire course though. Edited by bryanpeabody on 22 December 2014 at 7:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4977 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 12 of 34 28 December 2014 at 7:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Christmas got me a bit off track since I was out of town for a few days and busy with
family and seeing people I haven't seen in a while. I did get a couple of hours of reading in last week but not much more. This afternoon I will get back on schedule: Reading, audio drills, Memrise deck and DELE test prep materials. More later on... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4977 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 13 of 34 29 December 2014 at 6:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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Remind me not to take a few days off anymore. Getting back into the Memrise vocab course was
rough last night. But I spent probably 30 minutes reviewing around 70 words. Most were ok but the new ones I learned right before Christmas were hard to recall. I also spent around 30 minutes watching a Simpsons episode in Spanish. I learned a few new words due to Marge getting a boob job ;) I'm starting to find the mismatched subtitles to be a distraction now. I may try to watch with them turned off. I expect my comprehension will go down and picking up random new words might be more difficult. Last night I had my first ever dream in Spanish after studying for 2 years. I'm not sure it really means anything but I remember dreaming in French when I was studying for a few months prior to a trip to Paris. It does make me wonder why one popped into my dreams quickly and the other took a long time. French does feel a bit easier and more natural to me so maybe that is why. Finally, I'm making plans for travel in 2015. In early February I'm going to be in Miami again for a week. This should give me opportunities for practice just like last year. Also, I'm thinking that I will go to Spain on a Rick Steves tour in late spring. It's been a toss up between Hawaii, Spain, German and Italy for the big trip this year but I think Spain would be the most fun. Especially as a Spanish learner. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4977 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 14 of 34 31 December 2014 at 7:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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The last couple of days have gone well. To mix things up a bit, I've started reading
more. In particular, El Pais and VienteMundos. VienteMundos is a great resource. I really like that they have comprehension questions and bits on grammar after the article. To my surprise, I've been able to read through articles on El Pais without too much difficulty. There are unknown words (that I look up) but I've been able to get the gist without much help. Definitely a positive sign. I'm going to start picking 1 article from El Pais and/or VienteMundos to read each day and putting more emphasis on listening. I'm nearing the end of the first LSLC course. I've really enjoyed this course. There is a second course that I'm considering doing. I've also heard that Notes in Spanish intermediate is well done. Either will probably be good, just as long as I have something Spanish to listen to while commuting. That's it for this year. Happy new year! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4136 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 15 of 34 01 January 2015 at 5:48am | IP Logged | ||
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Veinte Mundos is one of my favourite Spanish learning resources!
I'd also recommend trying the intermediate podcasts on Notes in Spanish. For dubbed shows, I really enjoy Buffy. My DVDs only have Spanish dubbing from season 3 onward. Buena suerte! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lampang Newbie Thailand Joined 3669 days ago 5 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Sanskrit | Message 16 of 34 01 January 2015 at 6:17am | IP Logged | ||
I read Agatha Christie in Thai. I didn't particularly enjoy it but that was mainly because I just don't like Agatha Christie; in terms of language learning, I think it was pretty useful. Authors - like all of us - tend to favour certain structures and phrases so if you just power through the initial difficulties, it really does get easier. Plus, you have the added advantage of that natural reinforcement. As for failing, it depends how you frame it. I don't finish every book which I start in my mother tongue but I don't consider that failing so why would I do so in a foreign language? If it's not a book you want to read (in English, in Spanish, in Klingon) it's just not a book you want to read. Edited by Lampang on 01 January 2015 at 6:19am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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