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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 129 of 212 04 July 2014 at 9:47am | IP Logged |
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I didn't get any reading done today, but Anki had enough to drive me crazy. All of a sudden there was this influx of words... I went through the first 50 or so and couldn't remember practically any of them. It was crazy. And because I couldn't remember so many of them today, tomorrow won't be pretty either. Maybe a night of sleep will help me process all of the words that I was having trouble with today so I will remember them better tomorrow.
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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 130 of 212 05 July 2014 at 12:19pm | IP Logged |
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Another difficult day with Anki... although not quite as difficult as yesterday. I remembered a good percentage of the words, but there were just so many. Then there were a lot that I couldn't remember.
I didn't do any reading... I don't plan on reading anything tomorrow either... I probably won't have time with my work schedule, and there will still be quite a few words in Anki tomorrow to tackle anyway. Hopefully in a couple of days, I will have learned enough of the words well enough so that I won't have to see some of them for a while, so there will be fewer cards to go through. Maybe I'll work on Russian if there are too many words to do in Anki. I won't have time tomorrow, but maybe Sunday. 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 131 of 212 07 July 2014 at 10:47am | IP Logged |
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A couple of things to mention today:
Anki is still driving me crazy. I didn't read anything, so no new words, but even though I had a reasonable amount of words, I just couldn't remember many of them. By the time I got to the last 10 or 20 words, I couldn't remember hardly anything. I guess that it doesn't help that I was dead tired when I did them, but I had a project that I wanted to finish with my business and that was the only time that I had. I got a call at work from a guy speaking Spanish that I almost could answer. I ended up needing help though. I guy was asking me about numbers... I thought that he was asking me about the number of a room. I gave it to a person who speaks Spanish better than me, who just happened to be standing there, and she explained to me that he wanted to know what number to dial to call another room. I understood all of the keywords, but I just didn't get everything completely sorted out correctly. At any rate, I did speak to him mostly in Spanish once he asked if I spoke Spanish, and I am getting better at it. So that was a milestone for me. I listened to Notes in Spanish Intermediate on the way to and from work. I often listen to podcasts, but with the 4th of July holiday that just past, I don't have anything new to listen to. I should listen to these podcasts more often. It's interesting about how my reading skill is far more advanced than my listening skill. I can read a sentence that says something like "Starfish have a small collection of nervous cells that interpret visual information" with pretty good understanding, but I can't quite understand "How do I call another room?" Not yet. But I'm getting there. Edited by Lorren on 07 July 2014 at 10:48am 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 132 of 212 08 July 2014 at 12:35pm | IP Logged |
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Anki practice was much better today. I still have more words than I would like to have, but I didn't wait until the end of the day to do them all. I had the day off, so I went through the word list in the afternoon... after I went through all of the words, I took my kids to gymnastics, leaving the 49 that I still had incorrect for later. When I got back, I sat down a couple of times, went through the word list once or twice, and then went and did something else for a while. I was able to get the words without the frustration that I had been feeling recently.
I wanted to get back to my reading though. Although my day was filled with gymnastics and making some designs for my business, I did get through a couple of pages in a new article in January's National Geographic. It is about foreign workers that go to Dubai to work, and are separated from their families. I had to look up 7 words. None of them were that outlandish today... I looked up words for overseas, canned, and stool, along with a few others. Sheik was another word that I had to look up... I guess that's not a word that I use on a regular basis, although I'm guessing that with the Middle East heating up politically, it might be one that I use more and more regularly. Not sure if I'll finish the article tomorrow... it is about six full pages of text... but it would be nice to try. If I get enough words right tomorrow in Anki, it won't be too bad... and I probably won't get the chance to sit down and read much during the workweek. 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 133 of 212 09 July 2014 at 11:26am | IP Logged |
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I read about three pages today. I ran into 11 words that I had to look up, including words meaning submerged, gamophobia (I had to look that one up because I didn't know what that meant in English), loyalty, loudspeaker, and dusty. Not bad. I came across some words that at one time in the past that I had to look up, but I know now, like skyscraper and border. While I'm not likely to run across gamophobia any time soon, you never know when you'll come across the others.
Anki was okay today. I once again used the technique where I go through the words one time, then go do something else and then come back and go through the word list again, then giving myself another break. It seems to work for me. My husband is renewing his interest in learning Spanish. Like me, he doesn't have a great love in particular for the Spanish language itself, but it's useful to know. It would be nice to have someone to practice with. Perhaps we can watch Frozen in Spanish together... he's a big Disney fan. I don't know if I'll get the chance to do any reading tomorrow... I have three more pages to go on this article about people traveling to places like Dubai to make extra money to send home to their families. If I do, great... if not, then I guess that it will give me the chance to work on Anki some more before I add more words to it. 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 134 of 212 15 July 2014 at 11:33am | IP Logged |
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Today I once again had the chance to do some reading. I read about three pages, finishing the article that I was reading about people going to foreign countries to work. I read the introduction to the next article, about the Sochi Olympics. I had to look up 16 words, including mattress, spa, ungrateful, hall, and respectfully. I'm still amazed at how many little words we don't use every day, but we know and use without thinking.
I've been practicing Anki, and I managed to get it down to a workable level, for now... even including the 16 new words that I added today. Most of the new words today I think will be pretty easy to learn, fortunately. I guess one good thing about not having as much time to read on workdays is that I can start learning the new words, and when I add new words, it doesn't end up as overwhelming. If I manage to read the article on Sochi over the next couple of days, I'm sure that it will push the Anki list over where I really like it to be... but then over the workweek, I can start learning some of the words and get the list down again. I guess at some point, the new words that I learn will slow down some more. They have, I suppose, from a year ago, but there are still many words that pop up. I may be able to end up finishing this issue before the next issue arrives... maybe. That would be an accomplishment for me. The first issues that I read took me a couple of months to read. The Sochi article is about 17 pages (but that includes pages with mostly pictures and a little text). The last two articles don't have as much text. It would be nice to start catching up. On an unrelated note, I just discovered that some of the Dragonlance books are available in Spanish. Since I've read the books in English several times, I think that I might want to try it in Spanish. Since I'm quite familiar with the book in English, I could probably read it in Spanish without sitting in front of Google Translate... I could figure out what was going on without help, and could write down words that I was unsure of to look up later without getting lost and not knowing what was going on. The only downside is that the books are more expensive than in English (I wish they were on the Kindle), but if I keep my eye out on Amazon, eBay, and other book sites, I might be able to get them for a decent price. 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 135 of 212 17 July 2014 at 10:55am | IP Logged |
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My weekend is over, but I did manage to finish my Spanish reading goals. I read half of the article yesterday, and today I finished it. Today I looked up 15 new words, including grenade launcher, highlights, superhuman, and leather.
The article seemed a little difficult for me. There was probably a lot that I didn't quite understand as well as I would have liked to. Some of the highlights from the article include the fact that there was controversy over having the Olympics in Sochi due to the climate, and they were expecting to have to truck in fake snow (which they did... and some of the athletes were wearing short sleeves during some of the cross country skiing events). The location was not the safest place to hold an Olympic games, due to terrorist activity, and some places in the area changed hands with nearby Georgia. I love it when I see words that I recently learned, and I know them. Today words for bubbles and sleepy popped up. I don't expect to find time to do any more reading between now and my next day off. Next week, I hope to finish reading January's Issue of National Geographic en Español. I have an article about lizards and another article on what I think is a museum or a collection of various species of animals of some sort. Neither of them are really long like the Sochi article that I read today and yesterday. Despite reading 17 pages in the last couple of days, Anki has not become unmanageable over the "weekend". I was surprised at how well I was remembering the words today. I have a few more days to get the list down before I read some more and once again add more words. As long as I don't end up taking an extended Anki break again, I think that I should be able to keep the list at a decent size now. 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 136 of 212 23 July 2014 at 6:42am | IP Logged |
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Over the course of the last week, I did get a little bit accomplished in Spanish. Up until today, I didn't do any more reading, but I did read an article about Komodo dragons today. I had to look up 23 words in 4 full pages of text, plus pages with pictures (I combined partial pages of text with other partial pages, so it was about 4 pages if it was just straight type). Some of the words that I had to look up included forked tongue, prey, carrion, spellbound, and watering holes.
Even though I didn't have enough time for reading, I did get a lot done in Anki. I managed to get the cards that I need to study in my deck down to a manageable level, and even with the 23 words that I added today, the amount of cards that I need to study still isn't that bad. I love it when I run into words that I've been practicing; today, I ran into catedrático, which means professor, and that I would have had to look up before. Today, as I ran across it, I thought to myself, "I know that one!" I have about three pages of text to read in the current issue that I'm working on, and then I can start reading February's issue. I'm six issues behind, but now that I'm getting to the point where I am starting to get caught up, rather than getting further behind, I figure that I'll catch up someday :). I just renewed my subscription today for another year. I figure that I should be able to get caught up before my subscription ends next year. I'm sure that I won't see as quick of progress that I saw over the last year, but I'm sure that by this time next year, my reading will have improved a lot over where it is this year... especially if I end up getting the Dragonlance books and read those. Those I don't plan on reading with Google translate, since I've read it several times in English already and know the story quite well. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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