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Spanish - A0 to B1 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| rtickner Diglot Groupie AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3462 days ago 61 posts - 95 votes  Speaks: English*, GermanB2 Studies: French, Spanish | Message 1 of 14 02 June 2015 at 3:26am | IP Logged | ||
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This log documents my progress in Spanish from complete beginner to B1 level, sitting
the B1 exam at the Instituto Cervantes in Sydney in October 2015. Start: 1st June, 2015 Time studied: 49 hours Plan of attack: Michel Thomas I listen to these once through while commuting / running. Later, I get out the CD booklets, cover up the Spanish side, and translate from English to Spanish, writing out the Spanish by hand and checking afterwards by uncovering. - Basic (listen/speak) - 8 hours - completed on Day 3 - Basic (read/write) - 6 hours - completed on Day 3 - Language Builder (listen/speak) - 2 hours - completed on Day 6 - Language Builder (read/write) - 4 hours - completed on Day 13 - Advanced (listen/speak) - 4 hours - completed on Day 10 - Advanced (read/write) - Vocab Builder (listen/speak) - 5 hours - completed on Day 13 - Vocab Builder (read/write) Hugo in 3 Months Front to back, completing all exercises. - Chapter 01 - - Chapter 02 - - Chapter 03 - - Chapter 04 - - Chapter 05 - - Chapter 06 - - Chapter 07 - - Chapter 08 - - Chapter 09 - - Chapter 10 - - Chapter 11 - - Chapter 12 - Destinos Just watching the episodes. Not planning on doing the workbook/exercises. Each episode is 30 minutes long. - Episode 01 - Day 14 - Episode 14 - - Episode 27 - - Episode 40 - Episode 02 - - Episode 15 - - Episode 28 - - Episode 41 - Episode 03 - - Episode 16 - - Episode 29 - - Episode 42 - Episode 04 - - Episode 17 - - Episode 30 - - Episode 43 - Episode 05 - - Episode 18 - - Episode 31 - - Episode 44 - Episode 06 - - Episode 19 - - Episode 32 - - Episode 45 - Episode 07 - - Episode 20 - - Episode 33 - - Episode 46 - Episode 08 - - Episode 21 - - Episode 34 - - Episode 47 - Episode 09 - - Episode 22 - - Episode 35 - - Episode 48 - Episode 10 - - Episode 23 - - Episode 36 - - Episode 49 - Episode 11 - - Episode 24 - - Episode 37 - - Episode 50 - Episode 12 - - Episode 25 - - Episode 38 - - Episode 51 - Episode 13 - - Episode 26 - - Episode 39 - - Episode 52 Assimil Spanish with Ease Progressing through the book as per the course introduction. - Passive 001 - 010 - - Active 001 - 010 - - Passive 011 - 020 - - Active 011 - 020 - - Passive 021 - 030 - - Active 021 - 030 - - Passive 031 - 040 - - Active 031 - 040 - - Passive 041 - 050 - - Active 041 - 050 - - Passive 051 - 060 - - Active 051 - 060 - - Passive 061 - 070 - - Active 061 - 070 - - Passive 071 - 080 - - Active 071 - 080 - - Passive 081 - 090 - - Active 081 - 090 - - Passive 091 - 100 - - Active 091 - 100 - - Passive 101 - 109 - - Active 101 - 109 - Learning Spanish Like Crazy Purely listening and responding to the audio, no writing/reading. - Level 1 Part 1 - - Level 1 Part 2 - - Level 2 Part 1 - - Level 2 Part 2 - - Level 2 Part 3 - Anki Started in parallel with the MT / Hugo courses. I build two decks of the 5000 most frequent words, with example sentences, from the Routledge Frequency Dictionary - one for recognition (Sp -> En) and one for production (En -> Sp). I learn 200 words per day from each of these decks, so 400 cards per day all up. Takes around two hours a day to do. Sounds like a lot of cards, but really isn't when you spread them out over the day. You know a lot of the words from the courses already, and a lot of others are similar to English or French. - Top 0,500 - 5 hours - completed on Day 3 - Top 1,000 - 5 hours - completed on Day 6 - Top 1,500 - 5 hours - completed on Day 10 - Top 2,000 - 5 hours - completed on Day 12 - Top 2,500 - Top 3,000 - Top 3,500 - Top 4,000 - Top 4,500 - Top 5,000 Native materials Starting with CEFR A1 level graded readers, moving up to teen/adult fiction, TV, movies, songs. Exam Preparation Exam guides closer to the date. Sample A1, A2 and B1 exams. Based on previous progress with French, I anticipate having the language pretty handily bootstrapped by the end of the month, and should be hitting native materials by the first week of July. Note that "bootstrapped" and "hitting native materials" is nowhere near "fluent", more a jumpstart to an intermediate level in a relatively easy language for a native English speaker. Enjoy your studies. Edited by rtickner on 30 July 2015 at 2:40am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| basica Senior Member Australia Joined 3480 days ago 157 posts - 269 votes Studies: Serbian | Message 2 of 14 02 June 2015 at 4:22am | IP Logged | ||
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I didn't know there was a center to sit for your CEFR exam in Sydney. Good to know for
whenever it is I decide to go :) Seems like you have a pretty solid plan there, though I gotta say 200 cards is still a helluva lot of cards even spread out through the day. Your reviews are really going to suck after a few days but if you got the determination, good on you! Good luck with your journey and I look forward to seeing how you progress. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rtickner Diglot Groupie AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3462 days ago 61 posts - 95 votes Speaks: English*, GermanB2 Studies: French, Spanish | Message 3 of 14 03 June 2015 at 6:45am | IP Logged | ||
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Day 3
Michel Thomas 8 hour foundation course completed, plus the handwritten translation of all the English in the course into Spanish, checking afterwards in the booklet for spelling and corrections. What a great course to begin with. Top 400 Spanish words done in Anki so far, most of these appeared in the MT course, so nothing too new. Moving on now to the MT Language Builder. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jtdotto Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5173 days ago 73 posts - 172 votes Speaks: English*, Korean Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, German | Message 4 of 14 03 June 2015 at 10:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Seems like a solid study plan! Though I personally find Anki lists more of a supplement for material I've worked
through like GLOSS lessons, podcast episodes, vocabulary I've picked up through reading, etc. Basically as a tool to make learned words stick better, but using it as primary vehicle for massing vocabulary seems like it would be incredibly monotonous and boring. On top of that 400 words a day, that's ambitious, though not impossible I would think, if you have a goal like taking a proficiency test in October. I like Michel Thomas as a starting point, and the fact that you finished it in 3 days suggests you have a good amount of time on your hands. I'd like to suggest bringing podcasts into your routine, something like Notes In Spanish (perfect for driving and running), along with UT Austin's Online Spanish Collection. GLOSS as well, you can begin with their level 1 articles and just systematically work through all the topics. They have some fantastic stuff for Spanish there, different accents and regional varieties, etc. I don't know if your exam will have a speaking component to it, but if it does, a tutor might not be a bad idea. Over skype or in person, but some sort of recourse to a native always weaves all the single study threads together. A small LR project might be helpful too. Assimil is basically that, but the content can be kind of hodge podge, and I'm not sure if there's a New Assimil Spanish, but the one from the 80's is just so so. But reading Harry Potter in Spanish while listening to the audio in English can be very helpful for amassing everyday vocabulary as well. You'd be surprised at how many times you'll run into words like pick up, grab, take, bring, carry, reach, etc., incredibly common words used in all kinds of contexts throughout the story in various conjugations. This can be helpful for a greater global understanding. Anyways, good luck! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| rtickner Diglot Groupie AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3462 days ago 61 posts - 95 votes Speaks: English*, GermanB2 Studies: French, Spanish | Message 5 of 14 04 June 2015 at 2:33am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for dropping by jtdotto, and for your suggestions. I don't pretend to be an expert on
language learning by any stretch of the imagination, so take what I do with a grain of salt. I'm a professional working full time, with an hour commute each day, and a baby on the way, so extra time is something I don't have a lot of. When I started studying German (more than 10 years ago), I started slowly, and it took me a long time to get into it. When I started learning French (about 5 years ago), I studied as much as I could for the first 6 weeks to get a leg up on it, then switched over to L-R and parallel texts, and that worked pretty well. So with Spanish, I am putting in the elbow grease early - sure, it's not sustainable long-term, but it gets my foot in the door. Everybody has their opinion on how to use Anki, I have experimented a good deal with Leitner boxes, Supermemo and Anki and for me, nothing beats the onslaught of a couple of hundred fresh cards a day. Opening up Anki and seeing that I currently have 874 cards due makes me feel like Ahab going after the white whale. It's not daunting in the slightest - it's exhilarating - once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more. It's also highly effective - for the 600 new words I have learned in the last 3 days, I have an 87% success rate in recalling the English from the Spanish, and an 83% success rate in producing the Spanish from the English. Even if my rate were to drop to 50% (unlikely), I would still theoretically learn to recognise 2,500 words by month's end. The only other method I have found that got me anywhere near this number were Iversen's List method, but I find Anki to be more convenient. After the first four weeks, I am ditching the training wheels and moving over to native materials. Audiobooks, podcasts, music, reading novels, maybe some parallel texts, L-R, reading/watching the news. I have no desire to slog through endless language courses. I have wallowed in that quagmire before with my German studies long ago. At the end of the day, I am learning Spanish to use Spanish, not to learn Spanish, if that makes sense. Enjoy your studies. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jtdotto Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5173 days ago 73 posts - 172 votes Speaks: English*, Korean Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, German | Message 6 of 14 04 June 2015 at 5:46am | IP Logged | ||
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Completely agreed about the slogging through courses, it can be a very unmotivating experience. Getting to native
material as early as possible is ideal in my opinion, even if it's with a crutch (an intermediate podcast, a graded reader, English audiobook with the target language text, GLOSS, etc). I'm also a big fan of using various resources all simultaneously, so that the method and presentation is always changing, but the content is pretty much the same (in this case Spanish). It's a mutually reinforcing method and keeps it fresh and fun. As far as Anki, I think it's great you get excited learning with it in the way you've described. It seems like a very effective way to learn. For me, I think Anki learning can get monotonous quickly and kills the learning a bit, but hey! Different strokes, different folks. I think you have a solid plan and I look forward to reading about how you progress and how the exam goes. I'm a year into Portuguese and am nearing the stage of almost all native materials all the time, and it's got me interested in doing French and possibly Spanish as well. I'm thinking about how I can adjust and perfect my own method of learning based on this experience (which was based on my previous Korean experience). Bueno suerte~ 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 7 of 14 04 June 2015 at 2:25pm | IP Logged | ||
Welcome to the forum! Slogging through endless courses is a trap that many learners can fall into doing. The thinking is that courses are the answer. The opposite trap is thinking that native materials are the answer and being overwhelmed by material that is incomprehensible. I recommend a balanced multi-track approach which has worked well for me and others. The link is to my thread on it. One of the benefits of choosing to learn Spanish is that there are a huge amount of resources available for it with an English base. The downside to this is that there are so many resources available that a learner can be overwhelmed. The fact that there are so many resources available doesn't mean one has to use them all. I would pare down my long-term courses to two. Something like a textbook with audio and a complementary audio/visual course. A classic combination is Assimil or FSI Basic Course with Pimsleur/Learning Spanish Like Crazy/Destinos. Destinos is a 52 lesson television course in the format of a telenovela. You don't need the books though you can find them online by searching. It is comprehensible, covers the majority of the Spanish-speaking world's accents and is free. Pimsleur/LSLC are audio only courses good for driving or walking and listening. Only get them if you can find them free at the library (ask for an inter-library loan if they don't have it) or for low cost used. With native materials, the key is to not bite off more than you can chew. You have to crawl before you can walk, and walk before you can run. I'd start with something like the news with a transcript. You're Australian and most of the bilingual resources available are American, that's just a fact of geography and population size, sorry about that. Australia does have Spanish news programs available but without a transcript on SBS Radio. When I was actively learning Portuguese, I listened to them quite a bit despite the Australian focus (by any means necessary). For print news, I recommend AP Noticias en Español. Yeah, the Associated Press is an American news agency. Much of the news on the Spanish site is international. The reason I recommend the AP is that you can make your own parallel texts by going to the English site and searching the same story. Democracy Now! is a left leaning daily US broadcast in both Spanish and English- with a transcript in both languages. You can make a bilingual text for reading and listen to the podcast in Spanish. Just go to the English site for the English transcript. One big caveat- the Spanish is rapid fire, full on native speed. If you can handle DN, you can handle listening to anything in Spanish. NHK World Español has a daily 15 minute newscast in Spanish (native-speakers) with probably the most boring, dry news cast it is possible to have in the world. So, why do I recommend it? Because it has an accurate transcript and the news items are short. It's part of the whole 'by any means necessary' thing. I listened everyday in Portuguese with the transcript and it helped me to train listening. The English versions of the stories can be found by searching their English site. I can put up with anything for 10-15 minutes if it helps me to reach my goal of learning a language. There are other ways to use native materials effectively if you have some computer skills. Emk's Spanish: A little subs2srs experiment is definitely something I would try- highly effective. So to sum up, my advice is to pare your learning resources but make sure what you have is complimentary and for the long term. Second, don't jump in whole hog with native materials like a bat out of Hades. Make sure the native materials are comprehensible input. In other words not "maybe some parallel texts" but definitely some parallel texts. As emk calls it, "cheating" is a lot more effective. feel free to PM if you need any help or have further questions. I am happy to do so. Edited by iguanamon on 04 June 2015 at 3:16pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| rtickner Diglot Groupie AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3462 days ago 61 posts - 95 votes Speaks: English*, GermanB2 Studies: French, Spanish | Message 8 of 14 05 June 2015 at 3:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi iguanamon, thanks for your advice, those links will save me a lot of time when I start watching the news.
Thanks too for your suggestions based on Farber's book, and long-term course options. To prevent scope creep and my old arch enemies I encountered when studying German (analysis paralysis and the agony of choice), I'm sticking to my initial strategy as outlined in post #1. If I decide afterwards to continue through to B2 and beyond, I'll definitely check out some of the other courses you've suggested. The subs2srs method looks good, but With all due respect, I don't see the value in it given the amount of time it requires to set up, the turnover rate of cards, and the need to find appropriate series, subtitles, etc. Reminds me of the time I spent 20+ hours trying to align parallel texts for the L-R method, only to find that whole chunks of the text had been cut from some languages and that the audio had been abridged in places as well. I could have met ~1,200 new words in Anki in that time. You live and learn I guess. With my current strategy, the Michel Thomas courses and Hugo's in 3 Months were already on my bookshelf, and it took 45 minutes to create the Top 5000 deck for Spanish from the Routledge Frequency Dictionary (Spanish word / English translation + an example sentence) - no need for more materials at this stage. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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