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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 4195 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 105 of 212 14 April 2014 at 11:13am | IP Logged |
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I started watching Frozen in Spanish today. I know the movie backwards and forwards in English, so I figure that is a good place to start because I'll know what is going on at all times. There's a lot in the movie that I don't follow all the words, and some places where I do follow and the words are not the same at all.
I'm also reading an article about Mexico City. I'm going to go camping with my parents for the next couple of days, so probably not too much Spanish... however, I'll probably bring along one of my already-finished issued of National Geographic, just in case I have some down time and want to work on my Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| BOLIO Senior Member United States Joined 4602 days ago 253 posts - 366 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 106 of 212 14 April 2014 at 6:13pm | IP Logged |
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I am enjoying your log and wish you the best. I am working on Spanish and thought that French would be my next language...maybe a year or so down the road. Now, I think Russian may be calling me. I don't know but I will watch your journey with great interest.
All the best. 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 107 of 212 20 April 2014 at 9:54am | IP Logged |
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Thank you. I took a look at your log and it looks good!
I signed up for the Super Challenge for Spanish. While I do intend to move forward with Russian (and at some point pick up German again), I'm at the point in Spanish where most of my studying is through reading or watching something, so it makes sense. 150 hours of movies/5000 pages of reading seems like a lot, but over the course of a year and a half, it really isn't. That's less than an hour of watching the news/listening to a podcast/watching a music video a day. Today I had the chance to practice some of my Spanish at work. I was checking in a guest who spoke Spanish and had a bilingual translator with her. I used what Spanish I could with her. At my hotel, nobody expects us to speak anything but English, but we do try to please our guests, and speaking a little bit of their own language is a nice thing, I would think. It wasn't quite as pleasing to me as when I was able to say "happy birthday" to a deaf person in ASL, but I was happy to be able to speak what I could. As my confidence in Spanish grows, I'm sure that I'll be able to say more. I don't know if it will be before the time I move (my husband is waiting for the approval to work in a job in another state), but there will always be situations to use it. I will be finishing the article that I started reading about Mexico City today. It was written in 1930, so there are some words in it that I wasn't really familiar with just because of that (like typewriter). It was funny to read about how movies with sound had just come out, or how people were using telegraphs to send each other invitations to dinners and the like. 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 108 of 212 22 April 2014 at 8:48am | IP Logged |
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Today I managed to read six pages. I probably had to look up about 30, maybe 40 words out of those six pages. The other words I either knew already or could infer. I looked at some of my earlier entries to this log, and just 8 months ago all I could manage to read was a few paragraphs... and in those few paragraphs, I'd have to look up about 10 words or so. Although language learning progress seems pretty slow, when viewed from a distance, I can see that I am making progress.
I was reading some of the pages on the forum (about the Super Challenge that I will be starting in about 10 days), and one of the posters remarked that after reading a few books, it became easier. I'm currently reading the fourth National Geographic that I have purchased, and I guess that it is true. The first one took me months to read. I now have five still shrink-wrapped magazines on my desk, and another one will arrive in the next couple of weeks. Even a couple of weeks ago, I thought that I probably would want to let my subscription lapse for a while because I would probably never end up catching up. However, if I can read six pages in a day (not counting the pages that are mostly pictures) then there's a good chance that I actually will be able to start catching up. So maybe I'll renew. While I was reading, I ran across a word that I learned quite a while back that I didn't expect to see very often: hay. When I saw it while reading today, I thought "hey, I know that word!" I know that it's not a rare word or anything, but it's also not something I use every day either. It's exciting to me to see work that I did months ago paying off. My main Anki deck is at over 1100 cards now, but I don't see nearly that many cards in a day. I'll see about half the cards in the next couple of weeks, but there are some cards that I won't see again for a year or more. 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 109 of 212 23 April 2014 at 9:28am | IP Logged |
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I read another six pages today... I only needed to look up 18 words.
I was so tired that learning my new words in Anki today was tough. I was thinking that it is so much easier to learn a language today than it was when I was first trying to learn German more than 25 years ago. I was looking through the selection of magazines available on Zinio.com, especially since reading is getting easier for me. Although I'm having difficulty finding Spanish magazines in the physical store, there are a few available digitally that I might be interested in. In addition, there are also Russian and German magazines available to read! I'm far away from being able to read those magazines, especially in Russian, but they should be available when I am ready for them. Plus, there are tons of podcasts and videos on YouTube if you know where to look. I was a little pleased while looking at the Zinio site, when I was viewing the Russian version, that I was able to read some of the categories and understand them. I could understand sport, home, and technology. At least I know that my understanding of Russian has not gone back to zero while I'm concentrating on Spanish. My trip to Mexico and the Caribbean is not too far away now. Hopefully when I get back, I'll be able to focus a little more on Russian. I am doing the Super Challenge in Spanish, but with the progress that I'm making in reading, by the time I get back, I'd like to be able to make progress on the Super Challenge and then set Spanish aside to work on Russian. I still would like to work on German, perhaps at the end of the year, but first I want to move to the next stage in 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 110 of 212 24 April 2014 at 11:04am | IP Logged |
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Today I read four pages and had to look up fourteen words. I only have five more pages to read from the current issue of National Geographic that I'm reading... I've read this one quite quickly, compared to the other ones that I've read. One of my main goals with Spanish was to be able to read it well, and it looks like I am well on my way. Throw in the Super Challenge, and I should be able to have passable listening comprehension as well, which will be nice.
It will be interesting to see how my Spanish interactions have changed between my day in Mexico this year and the one I had last year. Last year, my tour guide said that I spoke Spanish well... that was back when I had to look up about 14 words per paragraph, LOL. While I don't use a whole lot of Spanish in my day-to-day activities, my passive Spanish, especially as far as reading is concerned, has improved a great deal. At any rate, I am very happy with the progress that I've made in a year, and I can't wait to put it into practice. 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 111 of 212 27 April 2014 at 8:26am | IP Logged |
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The last couple of days has not left me with much alert time to practice my Spanish. Today I did practice most of the Anki words that I was supposed to practice for the day though. It's better than a couple of days recently where I just didn't have enough time or energy to do it at all.
I have a couple of short articles before I can start reading December's issue of National Geographic en Español. I hopefully will be able to get one of them read tomorrow (they're short). Maybe I can finish the whole issue. Languages show up in the strangest places. I went to my husband's friend's house, and we were playing a role playing game. Our characters were in a strange land, and we saw a sign. Now it was supposed to be in a language that we wouldn't recognize, but when he showed us the writing, I immediately recognized it as Russian. I could read it, although I couldn't interpret most of it. I was able to pick out the word "energy" though. I thought that was interesting... I don't think that he expected any of us to be actually able to read the words, even though I couldn't really understand what it said. 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 112 of 212 30 April 2014 at 10:02am | IP Logged |
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I didn't do much reading in Spanish today, but I did watch (or listen to) more than an hour of CNN in Spanish. I started watching during an interview with some lady that they were doing about genetically modified food. Even though listening is certainly not my strong area, I was able to understand quite a lot of words there, like seeds, farmers, toxic, and planting. Rosetta Stone taught me farm, but most of the other words that I recognized came from reading National Geographic and putting the words that I didn't know into Anki.
I was about half-listening part of the time, as I was also playing a video game, but every little bit helps. I may end up going ahead and purchasing Anki for the iPad. I'll have to make sure that I can use it offline though. While I'm on my cruise, I won't have internet access, and I will be gone for several days. It might be good to practice while I'm away, and it will keep my Anki workload to a manageable level. I'm still running into new words nearly every time I read something, so it's not like I'll be able to get to the point where a good majority of the words are mature words that I won't see for a year or two. I do have some words that are like that, but since there is a constant influx of new words, there are still quite a few that show up a lot. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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