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2015 Goals and Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4953 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 25 of 34 16 March 2015 at 5:46pm | IP Logged |
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Take care! Health should always come first.
Just another dubbed tv series tip: Once upon a Time/ Erase una Vez. I found this one to be the most accessible to an intermediate learner out of the five or so I tried. I am surprised you are just fine with the Family Guy and the Simpsons, the animated series tend to be more difficult from my experience (either Futurama or the SImpsons got me scared and desesparate once :-D ) I'd however warn you about choosing the level. The gap between B1-B2 tends to be much wider than the one between A2-B1. Whether you choose B1 or B2, I'd recommend you to get a preparatory book and/or past papers as soon as possible and start preparing exactly for one of the exams. It might be not only the "level of the language", the nature of the tasks may vary as well. P.S. Do you practice Spanish with your girlfriend as well? Or only your tutor/exchange from Spain? And which variant of Spanish does your girlfriend speak? :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4929 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 26 of 34 16 March 2015 at 6:37pm | IP Logged |
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@Stella Thanks! Spanish has become an addiction, not even kidney stones can stop me haha
@James29 Clara works for Ecuavisa tv and was at Telemundo for a work meeting. They were nice enough to offer her a tour before the meeting and I was lucky enough to get to tag along. I'm not sure if they are open to the public or not, I didn't see any other non- employees there. @Cavesa I've actually given up on the Simpsons and Family Guy. I was watching with Spanish subtitles, which didn't match well, and was finding it difficult. I am looking for something else to watch, some of the shows on RTVE have subs so I'm going to try those out soon. I've also heard that the gap between B1 and B2 was big, which is why I'm a bit hesitant. I will def take your advice and start looking at the old exam papers soon. Probably this week. Yes, she and I practice a lot. I've been practicing with her instead of a tutor for several months now. I feel like I learn more this way and am more relaxed. She's Ecuadorian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4929 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 27 of 34 23 March 2015 at 2:34pm | IP Logged |
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Well, another week of Spanish learning has passed and it's time for the weekly update...
Reading I've completed several more chapters in Charlie y la fabrica de chocolate. My kindle tells me that I'm 25% through the book now. I'm reading at approximately a 90% comprehension level. This is based on selecting a random page and counting up the number of words I have to look up. I'm happy with that but I'd like to get that up to 95% or better. It seems that I have the most difficulty when the author is describing something in detail, such as a winner of a billete de oro. With Assimil, I'm doing one lesson a day and I'm on lesson 27 today. So far, I'm moving through it at a good pace. I've picked up a few new words, here and there, and some grammar points. I've seen the subjunctive a few times now and so far it hasn't been too difficult. I'm hoping to get more practice with this as I move through the book. Listening Assimil recordings are my daily goto while driving to and from work. I get between 45 minutes to 1 hour of listening each day with these dialogs. Yesterday I watched El Clasico on Bein Sports Espanol and got a solid 2 hours of futbol Spanish plus commercials in Spanish. The commercials are especially good practice. I've noticed that almost every commercial includes "llame ya" and "gratis" :) It has become a running joke lately. AT&T has a commercial that is running a lot on there that has gotten stuck in my head..."No me cree. No lo creo!". During speaking practice, I've noticed an increase in my comprehension level of what is being said to me and rarely do I have to ask for it to be repeated. I'm not sure how it has happened. Maybe it's just that I've been more focused on listening and the hard work is paying off. Whatever it is, it seems like all of a sudden my listening comprehension has taken a sizable jump. Writing I'm still writing everyday via WhatsApp. Speaking I'm still speaking with Clara several times a week. Saturday night we had a practice session that went well. I was complimented on how well I was able to flip between conjugating the present, simple past, imperfect and present perfect without any mistakes. I was thrilled to hear that. Usually deciding on the simple past or imperfect causes me to pause a second or two...or 20 :) I think I've got the hang of it now. Other Over the weekend I printed the B2 DELE exams and started looking through them. I think it's within grasp but it's going to take some work. I am going to start preparing for this exam instead of the B1. At best, I will be able to sit for the B2. At worst, I will be very well prepared for the B1. I've also decided to let my goal of A1 German this year go. I'm planning on focusing all my language time towards reaching B2. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4929 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 28 of 34 30 March 2015 at 12:50am | IP Logged |
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Update time...
Reading Slacked on pleasure reading this week and made no progress with Charlie y la fabrica de chocolate. Assimil I did every day, I'm on lesson 32 now. Today's lesson was the first that I thought was difficult. Several new verbs, phrases, and some subjunctive. I'm still trying to get at least 80% listening comprehension on this one before I move on to the next lesson tomorrow night. I did learn the construction volver a + infinitive. I don't think I have come across that before. Or did and didn't realize what it meant. Either way, I learned something new. Read 3 BBC Mundo articles (on Readlang) and imported 3 sample DELE B2 articles on Readlang this week. The BBC articles went well, I didn't have too much trouble with those. I didn't do the math but I'm guessing 90%+ comprehension. The DELE readings, one was fine, the other two were more than a bit challenging. And by a bit, I mean a lot :) Writing The usual Whatapps writing. Listening Last week was a terrible traffic week so I got a lot of listening in every day. Probably an hour or more each day just during commute time. This week I started looking at FluentU, seems promising. I watched/listened to a couple of videos and will try more this week. Speaking I only had 1 speaking call last week. I'm planning on one tonight. We'll see how well I do after not doing much speaking in the last few days. Sometimes a break helps me, other times it makes it worse. I might start doing Assimil listening in the morning commute and some sort of speaking exercise during the evening commute. We'll see. Misc I took the Cervantes placement test this morning and scored a B1.4. I was happy with the result but it didn't include speaking so I'm not sure how that will figure in to overall level. The reading comprehension was very difficult. I got the gist but the % was low I think. Definitely harder than BBC Mundo articles. Played with Duolingo a bit today and reviewed some basic skills. Not really Spanish related but I started reading an English book called "In the Land of Constructed Languages". Pretty good read so far. Some of the mathematical languages from the 1800's are far out there. Edited by bryanpeabody on 30 March 2015 at 12:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4929 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 29 of 34 06 April 2015 at 4:19pm | IP Logged |
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Another week has passed and it's time for sharing how I did last week...
Reading Up to lesson 36 in Assimil now. Using these as reading/listening practice is still going well. A lot of the lessons have been review but I'm picking up new words here and there, so it's been worthwhile. Sometimes I wish that Assimil was geared strictly for Latin American Spanish though. In one of the lessons that I did this past week, I saw the command form of vosotros, which just looked odd (salid, bebed). Chances of me actually using the vosotros form are slim but I suppose it's good to know just to be able to recognize it. I'm still loving short news posts on Facebook in Spanish, for short, dead time reading, these can't be beat. Friday I went to a local store and while browsing the DVD section, noticed that they had a small section of Spanish movies. To my surprise I could clearly read all the covers and what the movie was about in the description. I'm happy to say my reading is getting a lot better. Listening Lots of Assimil listening this week. At times there are voices that speak so fast and run words together that it's difficult to understand. The review lesson 35 had a couple of these. Saturday I had dinner at a Mexican restaurant. As I normally do, I listened in on the waiters talking amongst themselves. It was difficult. I could catch a word, here and there, but it was a bit of a blow to my confidence. I've been playing with FluentU the last week or so. I'm liking it so far. Subscription prices seem a bit high though. Speaking I had 3 video chats this past week, all of which went really well. Last week I mentioned that I was going to do some speaking drills during drive time. I ended up getting out the Pimsuler Spanish III CDs and did 1 or 2 lessons during the commute. I was looking to get in some extra speaking time and Pimsuler did the trick. I did 6 total throughout the week (and a weekend trip to visit some family) and remembered how difficult it is to do more than 1 a day. After about 1.5 my brain starts to tune out and I get bored. I'm not sure how I ever managed to get through the entire Pimsuler 4 CD set when I first started learning Spanish. Writing Lots of WhatApp writing. I've been doing a lot of Duolingo during dead time, mostly for the writing exercises. Misc Not really part of my Spanish learning but I made a goal of reading 12 English books in 2015. This past week I finished reading "In the land of invented languages" that I mentioned last week. Can't say I recommend it. It started off interesting but focused on things that just didn't keep my attention. I tried a sample of a new book I found on Amazon called "The Story of Spanish". The first couple chapters were good and I may end up reading the whole book. Plan for this week: (1) daily Assimil lesson and listening in the car (2) read 5 news articles for the week on BBC Mundo (3) at least 2 audio or video chats during the week (4) Continue with FluentU watching and/or find a native Spanish tv show with good subtitles (5) Duolingo as time allows. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4929 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 30 of 34 07 April 2015 at 6:25pm | IP Logged |
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Last night I started watching Extra Español on YouTube. Once without subtitles to see if I
could get the gist (I could) and then again with subtitles to pick up the words and phrases I missed. Enjoyable show, I'll keep watching these. I've noticed that the previous few Assimil lessons have taken a jump in the level of difficulty. I had been flying through without any issues because I had seen most of the material through lesson 35ish. Now that it has started covering the subjunctive more and throwing in more vocab that I don't know, I'm questioning if I can learn new material this way. It just seems so....passive. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4929 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 31 of 34 13 April 2015 at 3:31pm | IP Logged |
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Updates for the past week
I'm still focused on listening and speaking (and some reading). I've gotten hooked on Extra. I've completed the first 5 episodes, first watching without subtitles and then watching again with Spanish subtitles. The second time is to pick up any words I missed and learn new words. So far, it's been an easy show to understand. The only exception is when Lola gets upset and starts yelling. She is a bit hard to follow like that. Honestly, she is kind of mean I think. I've been trying out some of the new phrases I hear on the show with my Latin American friends. I think it's funny that I can pick up slang like "Que guay" and then try it out with Latin American speakers and they say....don't use that, it sounds strange :) I met my goal of 5 BBC Mundo articles last week. Also, I found that Cervantes has a list of readings for free, organized by level. I've been importing and reading these in ReadLang. I started the 3rd one last night. The stories aren't overly exciting but it's enough to hold my attention. During commute time, I've been doing speaking drills. Generally I get an hour of these each day. Less on Saturday and Sunday since there is no commute. All in all, a good week. I definitely think my listening is improving. Plan for this week More of the same. Try to complete 5 more episodes of Extra with good understanding. Read 5 more articles and/or short stores from Cervantes. Complete at least 5 30 minute speaking drills during commute time. Edited by bryanpeabody on 13 April 2015 at 3:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4929 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 32 of 34 23 April 2015 at 7:05pm | IP Logged |
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Well, I'm a bit late with the update this week. But, mas vale tarde que nunca...
I've nearly finished the Extra series. I think there is only 1 or 2 left to watch. I really have enjoyed the show. The listening difficulty picked up in the latter half of the series and Lola is still difficult to understand when she gets going. Overall, a fun experience and I picked up some new words and phrases. I've been getting about an hour a day of speaking practice in the car during commute time with Learning Spanish Like Crazy. I remember using this CD maybe 6 months ago and thinking it was difficult around lesson 20. I've re-done 25 lessons as of today and haven't found any of it difficult. A sure sign of good progress. Although I'm not sure what to credit for that progress. Finally, I've been reading/listening at night using Lingq. I started this a few nights ago and like that all the texts have audio. I'm planning on trying this for a while. While focused on listening, I'm not sure exactly how much I should be understanding. Especially when watching the news, tv, etc. Massive input like this seems to be a good idea but it's so unstructured compared to a course that I'm not always sure it's working and that I'm progressing. Maybe it is. Time will tell I suppose. And finding n+1 material is more difficult than it should be. Some has been too easy, some too difficult. I'm thinking that Lingq will help with that since the readings are sorted by level. OK, I'm rambling. Until next time... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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