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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 41 of 212 11 September 2013 at 11:25am | IP Logged | ||
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I hit a milestone today: I finished reading my first magazine in Spanish. I guess it took me a little over a month to read it. Although I first got it in July, between then and now there was a lot of time that I couldn't read it because we were busy moving, or I was on vacation. I'll be getting one every month now, but they should become easier to read as the months progress. I was just browsing through the new magazine I had, and noticed a word that I ran into earlier today: dueño, meaning owner.
I didn't know if I would be able to finish today, as I had a little over three pages of text, plus a few pages of pictures with captions, to read. I didn't do any Rosetta Stone or Notes in Spanish. I would not have been able to read that much in less than an hour earlier this summer. I noticed a couple of phrases today; normally, I add individual words to Anki, but since these phrases translate to English, I just added the phrases in. 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 42 of 212 12 September 2013 at 8:31am | IP Logged | ||
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Today was the last day of this round of the Six Week Challenge. While I didn't do very well during the first several weeks, I did fairly well in the last couple of weeks and moved up a bit. I finished 63 minutes of Spanish today. Today I did Anki, two lessons of Notes in Spanish, and four segments of Rosetta Stone Level 5 Unit 2 lesson 3. I'm sure that I'll be concentrating on Russian in six weeks when the next challenge session comes along, although I will still be learning Spanish, so I will be logging those hours as well. By that time, my Spanish practice will probably mainly revolve around reading news and magazine articles, podcasts, and Anki. With less than 10 lessons to go in the entire Rosetta Stone series, I should certainly be done with RS Spanish by then.
When I read the editor's note from the new National Geographic, there were only 8 words that I needed to look up. My Anki words that I need to practice daily is getting a little large again, so the fact that I only had to add 8 words today is a good thing. I should get something of a break over the next few days of study, as the beginning of the magazine has little paragraphs about a certain topic or photo, so I probably won't be reading a lot of text in a day. If I do more Notes in Spanish, that won't add to the Anki deck either, because it's mostly just listening. I also want to finish Rosetta Stone, which also won't add to 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 43 of 212 15 September 2013 at 7:37am | IP Logged | ||
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What a difference a month or two makes! I started reading my latest National Geographic a couple of days ago with the Editor´s column. Today, I was still in the front of the magazine, and I read a little story about how this guy was out studying birds, and was captured by armed militants who wanted to use them as bait for some rebels (they escaped). Then, I read the images section, where they have some pretty photos and write some blurbs about them. When I tried to tackle this project in the last magazine I read, it took me several days, and I had to look up many words. Today, I read this section in about 15 to 30 minutes, and I had to look up 9 words.
So my reading ability is getting much better. I'm not too far away from my initial goal of being able to read newspaper and magazine articles in Spanish without much trouble. I still want to finish RS 5 before I move on to Russian, but I'm pretty happy with how things are going, and expect that once I do move on to Russian, the maintenance activities that I plan with Spanish (reading National Geographic, Anki review, and listening to podcasts) will help me reach further milestones. 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 44 of 212 18 September 2013 at 12:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Today I read three pages with little paragraph-sized articles in them: I read about baseball bats, took a quiz, and read an article about an artist who makes things with trash taken out of the ocean. I ran into 14 unknown words in the magazine, which I added to Anki. I also finished Rosetta Stone Level 5 Unit 2 Lesson 3, and started lesson 4.
My Spanish language has paid off in a small degree. One of the reasons why I want to learn foreign languages is so I can see what the media in other countries are saying about certain events. There were recently two hurricanes that hit central Mexico, and I was able to read about it. While it's just a small thing, it's good to know that my language skills are starting to help me see new things. 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 45 of 212 19 September 2013 at 10:46am | IP Logged | ||
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My Anki daily word list is getting a little big again. I read one small, one-page article today, and there were ten words that I didn't know. At this point, the problem is not that I'm adding a ton of words, it's that I'm not remembering the words quickly enough. I added a custom study session to help me learn the words more quickly. I don't mind taking the time to work with Anki; I just hate having so many outstanding words that I need to review. I just want to learn them well enough to have a small list.
I did a little bit in Rosetta Stone today. My goal is to finish RS5 before November 1st, when the next six-week challenge begins. I need to finish about one lesson every five days, which shouldn't be difficult if I keep up with it. Then I can focus on RS Russian, while doing reading and podcasts for Spanish practice. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4088 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 46 of 212 19 September 2013 at 12:13pm | IP Logged | ||
I find it hard to keep my word list small, even when they're words that I know. At the beginning, my anki decks took me about 10-12 minutes per day. Now I'm up to 20-23 minutes per day. I'm ok with that, but it's really my upper limit. If it ever gets over 30 minutes per day, I don't think I'll be able to keep up with it! I've done some googling to try to figure out how to keep the decks manageable, but I haven't really figured out the best way to organize things yet. 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 47 of 212 21 September 2013 at 4:01am | IP Logged | ||
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Have you tried changing the settings in the options? If it's the words that you know that are taking up most of your time, maybe increasing the interval between when you see the word again would help. Although the mature cards are 42% of my deck, it's a very small percentage of the words that I'm seeing. I've only been using Anki for about two months, so perhaps I haven't run into it yet, but I have cards that they won't show me for 6 1/2 more months, because they're words that are really easy for me. Most of the words that I see are words that are really new, or the words that I just am having a tough time get down. I set the maximum interval at 100 years... so pretty much if I really have a word down pat, at some point I'll never see it again in my lifetime.
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 48 of 212 21 September 2013 at 12:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Today I read two short articles that consisted of one page each. In those two pages, there were only seven words that I needed to look up.
I also did a few sections of Rosetta Stone L5 Unit 2 Lesson 4. I wrote on my calendar the days that I need to finish each lesson in order to finish RS 5 completely by the beginning of November, so I can focus on Russian for the Six Week Challenge. If I get ahead of schedule, that's fine too, but I don't want to get behind. I've been saying that I want to finish this thing for months. I did some more on my Anki deck. Over the last couple of days, I have been practicing the words that I got wrong the day before, before I go over the words for the new day. I think that I will see the results that I want from it. It causes me to practice the hard words twice in a day, rather than once. Over the last two days, my total review time has dropped by 2/3rds. Maybe that little bit of extra practice is all that I need. I added one word to Anki today from the most unlikely of places: a Brad Thor novel. In the story, one of the main characters goes to Spain, and when he confronts a person, the guy says "shut up" in Spanish. I figure that Spanish is Spanish, no matter where the source is. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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