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| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4195 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 169 of 212 30 September 2014 at 12:21pm | IP Logged |
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Today was a productive day for language learning. I watched Divergente (the movie) in Spanish; I understood more from the movie this time than last time. I also went over my Anki deck, and added all of the words from Insurgente that I have been highlighting to look up. In the morning, I watched part of Frozen, and I read some from Insurgente while the kids were at gymnastics.
I did a couple of exercises from FSI Spanish, and started working on lesson 4 in my Penguin Russian book, which deals with verbs. I didn't have any time to do any Rosetta Stone Russian. I received El Retorno de los Dragones today in the mail. It will be an interesting change in genre when I start reading that. They both have some similarities, but one is complete fantasy, while the other one could happen. I got my desktop computer back; it turns out that I have a faulty power supply. I took the power supply from my boy's computer. Unfortunately, his power supply won't power my video card, so my screen looks awful (and I have to magnify FSI a lot more than normal in order to read the words), but it works. Hopefully I can find time to read more in Insurgente tomorrow, practice more from FSI, and work on some more Russian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4195 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 170 of 212 08 October 2014 at 11:40am | IP Logged |
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It's been a while since I last updated, but that doesn't mean that I haven't been studying my languages.
I went to my grandma's celebration of life "party" over the weekend. She died last month. It was nice to see so many people I haven't seen in years, but it's very strange for her to not be there any more. I spoke four languages that day though: a little bit of German to my old German teacher, a few words of Russian to my Russian aunt, and a few words of Spanish to my toddler niece, who doesn't speak Spanish, but it never hurts to learn a few words. I missed a couple of days of Anki over the weekend, but that's understandable. I think that I'm still recovering from the couple of days that I only got four hours of sleep. I haven't done any FSI Spanish or Rosetta Stone Russian either (although I did read a couple of pages from The New Penguin Russian Course). I'm up to chapter 36 of Insurgente. I still have a ways more to go. I had a minor milestone at work today. We have a Spanish speaker staying at the hotel today, and she called and asked for someone who spoke Spanish. The first time she called was really easy. She just said "toilet paper." I told my co-worker that even he could have figured out that call. The second time she called, I understood that she was asking for five or six (I can't remember now, but I knew how many at the time) towels. I wasn't sure what size towels she wanted, so I asked her if she wanted "toalles grande" just to make sure that she wanted big towels or not. I initially couldn't understand the last half of her request, so I asked her to repeat it. What I initially heard was "4" and then the numbers of her room number. Then I realized that she was not saying cuatro, but cuarto. She was telling me her room number. Ah. I already knew her room number because it shows up on our phone, but it was good that I eventually figured it out. I was able to call housekeeping and get her towels sent up to her. I have another five days of work coming up still, so I'm not sure what I'll get done between now and then, but I'm sure that at the very least, I'll be able to get my Anki done and read some more from Insurgente. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4195 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 171 of 212 12 October 2014 at 10:13am | IP Logged |
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It's been a busy work week for me, so I haven't been able to get a lot done.
I have been keeping up with Anki, but I haven't read anything more out of Insurgente. I've been reading Catching Fire (in English). I'm sure that I'll get around to reading Los Juegos del Hambre and En Llamas eventually, but I want to get that and Mockingjay read before the movie comes out. I watched Divergente this evening. It's like the 3rd time I've watched it in Spanish, I think. I've only watched it once in English. It seems like I'm understanding more now than the third time I watched it. Even though I know the book backwards and forwards, the movie "diverges" somewhat from the book. I might watch it again in English, because the first time I watched it in English, stuff flew over my head. The movie is terrible at letting us know which character is which. If I hadn't read the book, I would have no clue what the names of the characters are, other than the major ones. I'm not even sure if they officially use Al's name. I don't know if they wrote it like this because there are so many characters it would be hard to tell them apart, or if the movie people think it would be irrelevant, or if it would add time to the movie (it's already 2 hours and 20 minutes long). Watching it again in English might help me solidify what they're talking about in the dialogue, although I am getting a lot. I like seeing it get easier, although I'm still not at the point where I understand every word of dialog. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4195 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 172 of 212 14 October 2014 at 1:52pm | IP Logged |
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Listened to Buenos Dias America today. It feels like I'm understanding a little more than I initially did. I'm getting more details from the broadcasts.
Read some from Insurgente. A few more chapters. I also added some vocabulary that I've been highlighting from Insurgente and added it to Anki. Not all, because I'm limited on time today, but some. I added throat, elbow (like to elbow someone), hood (like on a jacket), crown (like on the top of your head), and one other word. I'm sure that most of those words will come in handy later on, since they're fairly common. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4195 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 173 of 212 22 October 2014 at 10:33am | IP Logged |
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The last week has been pretty busy. Work called me in on my day off, after I had only slept for two hours... I spent the weekend house hunting in Colorado. Through it all though, I managed to practice with Anki every day, and I even read some from Insurgente on the plane.
Today I had a very productive day though. I only have three days left of work (unless someone calls out and they want me to come in), so I'm transitioning to a work-at-home schedule. I've moved up the time that I wake up, and I started to put together a checklist of things that I want to accomplish in a day, trying to keep in mind how much each task will take. So today I was able to get some Spanish and Russian study in. For Russian, I did some typing practice in Rosetta Stone Russian Level 2/Unit 1/Lesson 2. I also did the listening section. I worked in The New Penguin Russian Course, going over vocabulary and doing a couple of exercises from lesson 4. Most of the topics overlap, but the Penguin book gives a better explanation of some of the grammar points; today, I went over putting an ending on nouns in the prepositional case. I see it in Rosetta Stone and it's at times confusing. In Spanish, I practiced my Anki word list for the day, then went over several sections of FSI lessons 6 and 7. My main purpose for going through FSI is to solidify grammar, so I'm just doing the book, not the audio portion. It's mostly basic stuff; however, sometimes it's easy for me to trip up on the basics. I added 10 more words to Anki today. 5 were words I came across in FSI Spanish; the other 5 were words that I highlighted from Insurgente as I was reading. Some of the words I added included ash tray, pork chops, to limp, jealously, and off guard (unprepared). I didn't get anything accomplished towards the Super Challenge, but that's okay. Hopefully later on this week. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4195 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 174 of 212 25 October 2014 at 9:05am | IP Logged |
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Since my work outside the home life is winding down, I've been making productive use of my time. I've been putting together a schedule every day, planning things to do... including packing/cleaning, catching up on some things that I wanted to do but was to busy to do with my work schedule, and getting some language learning in... for both Spanish and Russian.
I haven't read from my National Geographics in a while, but I did read four pages on Syria today. Out of the four pages, I only had to look up 9 words, including rickety, upholstered, downtrodden, Alawite, and caravanaserai (the last two I had to look up in English because I didn't know what they were). There were so many words in the article that I recognized from Anki practice. I also listened to Buenos Dias America. I took an idea from Stelle's log and created Anki cards for all of the this, that, etc. pronouns that I'm going through in FSI. I certainly can understand all of the pronouns when I'm reading them; however, if I want to speak to someone else, I probably won't be using the correct form most of the time. I want to keep my deck simple, so my deck says something like "this (near me) casa: _____ casa" where I have to come up with the correct word to fill in the blank. In Russian, I finished Rosetta Stone Level 2 Unit 1 Lesson 2, and did the core section for lesson 3. I also finished chapter 4 in The New Penguin Russian Course. It feels strange, now that I'm at a point where I'm reading books and listening to news podcasts in Spanish, to be at the point in a language where I'm just struggling with basic stuff again. It will get easier though. I work tomorrow, so I don't expect to do much other than go through Anki. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4195 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 175 of 212 28 October 2014 at 9:44am | IP Logged |
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Yesterday was my last day at my job. Today was a pretty busy day though, so I didn't get a lot of language learning in. We had school in the morning, and then I took the kids to gymnastics. I did get to read some from Insurgente while I was watching the kids in gymnastics. I also did Anki.
My former place of employment had this rewards program where you could earn points for various things at work. There is a web site that you can spend your points to buy things. I had been saving up my points, hoping to earn enough for an SLR camera, or at least an upgrade to my Canon Powershot (and I'm pretty loyal to Canon). Well, I was a few points away from being able to get that camera, so I spent a while shopping for what I wanted today (I have like two weeks after I leave work to spend them). I bought a present for the kids, a Kindle Paperwhite, and several books, including the Los Juegos del Hambre series in Spanish. I finished The Hunger Games trilogy in English, as well as the Legend series by Marie Lu. I want to read those books in Spanish now too. So I have no shortage of Spanish books to read for the Super Challenge. My Spanish learning seems to be on autopilot now. There's FSI for grammar, and then Anki, but almost everything else is podcasts, books, and magazines. It's pretty cool because when I do get through FSI, pretty much everything else is something that I can do easily for maintenance. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4195 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 176 of 212 29 October 2014 at 8:16am | IP Logged |
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I had the opportunity to work on languages for a while. I'm almost done with Insurgente, and am adding more words to my Anki list. Today it includes scrambled eggs, furnished (from FSI), bookshelves, "had stood", and grid.
I finished lesson 7 in FSI Spanish. Mostly review today, but the practice is good for me. The translation exercises from English into Spanish seem to be the trickiest part for me. I did Rosetta Stone Russian level 2 lesson 3 pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar today. I also read most of Lesson 5 in The New Penguin Russian Course. I had my question answered about why it was в школе and на роботе. I guess it's в because you are inside an enclosed building, and на for work because it's an event. At the moment, it seems that the Penguin Russian Course and Rosetta Stone seem to be in sync with each other, even though I'm in level 2 of Rosetta Stone, and only 1/6th of the way through the book. The book is much more compact, but because it is so dense, it's hard to get all the info into my head. I think using both of them together helps. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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