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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| nancydowns Senior Member United States Joined 3866 days ago 184 posts - 288 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 145 of 196 07 May 2014 at 9:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks, Iguanamon! Yes, listening to native speakers seems to me like the hardest part of learning another language, and I know that needs to be
worked at, like exercise! So that kind of listening will definitely be in my near future! I was kind of waiting until I had a little firmer grasp on grammar so that I would have a chance of understanding things a little better. But I do hope in a month or so to add in that kind of listening. The transcript makes it possible to "hear" a few words, though, so I may try to listen to it here and there when I have opportunity. So do you suggest extensive listening, even if you don't understand a lot, or do you suggest reading the transcript a little more intensively looking up words and then listening? Do you know anything about Spanishpodcast.org? I have listened to a few of those podcasts with the transcripts. It is definitely much slower and easier to follow. Do you think it's not good to listen to something like that at the beginning? Will it get me too used to slower speech? I wouldn't listen to that forever and would move on to something faster and more natural eventually. But maybe I should skip the easier listening and, like you say, get the painful part out of the way, like pulling off a band-aid! :-) I definitely respect your opinion about these things! Thanks again for taking the time to make suggestions! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5319 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 146 of 196 07 May 2014 at 10:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think Spanishpodcast.org is awesome. I'd definitely use it. I think it is perfect. She has very heavy Barcelona accent (in case you could not tell). I really, really wish I used her podcasts/transcripts when I was starting to do extensive listening. It is definitely slow, but I do not believe it is artificially slow.
I-mon is right about extensive listening working... it works, but it takes time. I think the learner needs to be listening to something that they can mostly understand quite well. I do not think listening if you do not understand most of what is happening is a good idea. You need to be able to intuitively figure out the meaning of unknown words by the context. This is one of the reaspons Spanishpodcast.org is so great... because she explains (in Spanish) many of the trickier words and idioms. I'd stick with Spanishpodcast.org and easy audio books with texts. or, use an audio and text of a book you know extremely well. or, do the traditional L-R with a book you want to read. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5809 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 147 of 196 07 May 2014 at 11:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't see anything wrong with listening to slower material. The biggest obstacle you will have at first, in my opinion, is making sure everything stays in Spanish. You'll hear words or phrases and try to translate them into English. What you'll eventually do is hear the Spanish and understand it as Spanish, you won't jump back to English until you come across words and phrases that you aren't that familiar with yet and try to process them. But when you have a better grasp of the language and are used to listening to Spanish and understanding it as Spanish (and not as something that needs to be translated into English) you'll have more time to focus on the things that aren't as clear until pretty much everything just makes sense.
I tend to enjoy watching things that i can mostly understand or at least figure out from the visual context. The easiest things for me when i first started were cartoons. I think you'd be surprised how much you can understand in an episode of The Simpsons, for example. These days i don't really have trouble understanding any Spanish programs/movies, though certain accents still need me to focus a bit more. I think the biggest transition you have to make is getting to the point where you don't need to translate anymore. Honestly, after completing Platiquemos that transition was pretty easy. I found the biggest thing i needed was vocabulary, and once i had that i had no trouble understanding things that six months earlier seemed gibberish. Ah, and if you want to hear some really fast spoken Spanish, you should check out some rap groups, for example around 3:10 in the song El rap es guerra by Los Aldeanos ;) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5206 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 148 of 196 08 May 2014 at 1:23am | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with Crush and James29. That's why I used the news because The first thing I do in the morning when I get online is check the BBC News page and my twitter feed. I generally know the (international) news first before I hear it, so that's an advantage for me. The Simpsons is a a great alternative. It is adult enough not to annoy and yet not overly complicated. It's conversational, which is important and there are visual clues and context. You could even break it up into say, seven minute segments. Subtitles are available on the web, but it would be a lengthy post to explain to you how to use them.
As a beginner though, it may be difficult to find exact subtitles or a transcript. The transcript is very important at first because you have to know what you're hearing. Listening to anything outside of your courses that isn't artificially slow is good for training listening to the real thing. I have recommended UT Austin's Spanish Listening Exercises before. Try this guy's video interview. They are native speakers and come with a transcript in both English and Spanish. Click the link marked "Beginning" (upper left hand corner under the Texas icon) to get started. The videos are short and I think could be quite useful for you as a beginner and for repeated listening. 10 minutes a day, most days would be enough. The reason why I like a podcast is being able to do that sort of thing during down moments during my day with my phone. I am so ticked off at Kol Israel for not having a downloadable version or phone app of their Ladino newscast! Obviously, at this stage, your courses are most important, however; it's not too early to start branching out and taking care of business that those courses aren't designed to do- providing listening and reading training. Having experienced learners to help you is a good byproduct of having a log. That being said, we all have different styles and approaches. Rest assured, none of us will be upset if a particular bit of advice doesn't work out for you. I am convinced that with your dedication and hard work as demonstrated here, you will learn this language :). Edited by iguanamon on 08 May 2014 at 1:28am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5319 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 149 of 196 08 May 2014 at 3:16am | IP Logged | ||
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The Caso Cerrado episodes on the Telemundo website have accurate ver batim captions. That's a cool show because you get all types of Latin accents and people definitely speak like they speak normally... that being said, after several episodes you start to get the feel for what they are talking about. But, watch out, some of the episodes are a bit zany and crazy.
Just have fun. Find what you like and don't worry too much about it. The most important thing is to just continue doing something every day. I did a lot of things that probably did not help advance my Spanish much, but I did them because I "wanted" to and they were fun and rewarding to me. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| nancydowns Senior Member United States Joined 3866 days ago 184 posts - 288 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 150 of 196 08 May 2014 at 5:13am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks, everybody! I definitely know that listening is an important skill that I need to train, and I will certainly be doing that soon! Being able
to print off transcripts and listen to the podcasts on my mp3 is something that appeals to me because I can do that anywhere that I have time. Watching TV is a little harder because you have to be able to have your computer, which would work sometimes, of course. I will look into the things you suggested! :-) Thanks again for your encouragement and support! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| nancydowns Senior Member United States Joined 3866 days ago 184 posts - 288 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 151 of 196 19 May 2014 at 7:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hello! :-) Long time no post! I've been trying to keep my head above water during a special project. I have checked in a couple of times to see what everyone is
doing, but haven't taken the time to post anything for awhile. I'm still working on my language studies, so here's where I am at: SPANISH Assimil: First Wave Lesson 55 FSI: Unit 31 Lang-8 9/100 A link to my journal entries is Here Wayne Drop Page 2/12 Pimsleur III: Unit 27 Coffee Break Spanish: Lesson 42 Notes in Spanish: Lesson 9 Destinos: episode 37 ARABIC Mastering Arabic: Chapter 9 The main things to report are getting through FSI volume 2 (yay!), 9 entries on Lang-8 (I have kept to my 2 per week goal), 1 page finished in WayneDrop, and dropping back in Arabic. I know that last part doesn't sound good, but it's okay. I found out I was several chapters ahead of my study partner, so I decided there was no point in being that far ahead of her. So I am going back through each chapter and writing down all of the grammar points and looking them up online to see if I can find more detailed explanations. So I am doing a very thorough review of chapters 1-9 right now. I think it's probably good to go slower and more in depth with Arabic so that I get these things absolutely clear before moving on. I am enjoying Lang-8, although I still make tons of mistakes every post! But it is getting easier to write, it goes more quickly. I am going to have to try to think of something to write with some of these clitic pronouns I have spent so much time on recently in FSI. It is not an automatic thing for an English speaker to use those constructions, so I'd like to practice doing it. Of course, the age-old problem of what to write about! :-) I am keeping a handwritten error journal. I print out the original text, hand mark corrections, hand copy the corrected text, and then make a note of errors I made. This is a nice scriptorium exercise. I enjoyed doing the first page of Wayne Drop. I am using this as a scriptorium exercise, also. I hand copy out the page, noting any words or constructions I don't understand. Following Igunamon's advice, I am using Google images to look up words I don't know, instead of looking them up in a dictionary for the English word. Here's the words I learned last week from Wayne drop: gota, prueba, pupitre, sacar, repasar. The verbs are much more difficult. I could figure out the infinitives, but when you put a verb into Google images, you get some very amazing and varied things! I figured out these two, I think. :-) Here is a part of a sentence with a construction I am surprised about and don't understand so well. sé que tendrás la información que necesitas para salir bien en el FSPLAT It says "salir bien en el FSPLAT." Salir means to go out, right? And in google images, salir bien brings up a lot of pictures of girls taking selfies! ?? huh? :-) Why does it not just say "hacer bien" Okay, that's it! Good studies to everyone! :-) Edited by nancydowns on 19 May 2014 at 7:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5206 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 152 of 196 19 May 2014 at 8:29pm | IP Logged | ||
Ahhh, this is true. Nancy, my advice is to try google images first before looking up the words conventionally. When the result is inconclusive, by all means look them up either by consulting the English text of Wayne Drop, a bilingual dictionary or with linguee. "Salir bien" vs "hacer bien", that's just the way Spanish is and a good example of why foreign languages are not a one-to-one cipher code of English. You just have to know that "salir bien en el examen (FSPLAT)" means "to do well on the test/to pass the test" and accept it. The reason why I suggest not to rely too much on dictionaries is so you can exercise your mental ability to work out Spanish on your own. This helps to develop your language skills in a way that internalizes the language and fixes it in your mind better. If I can manage to work it out for myself, it helps me greatly. The dictionary, images and bilingual text serve to confirm that I am doing that. It doesn't always work, but when it does, those words or phrases are mine in a way that just looking it up without having made an effort doesn't make them mine as easily. The cool thing about Wayne Drop is this is a real-world (albeit professionally translated) text used to teach Spanish-speaking fifth graders in Florida schools about the Everglades, water management and the water cycle. It doesn't condescend to you as a learner. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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