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El Mariachi: Spanish experiment 2 | ||
Tags: Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5558 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 1 of 35 31 May 2010 at 10:58am | IP Logged | ||
INTRODUCTION
Ay ya yay ya! The first experiment ("Fighting Windmills") is now over; the second experiment begins... Over the next fortnight I'll be studying Spanish every day, drawing on a whole range of interesting techniques and activities, in the hope of building up a more solid foundation on the listening and reading skills acquired during the last fortnight. The focus during this fortnight will be mainly on listening and speaking. Once this experiment ends, I'll be starting private lessons with a native Spanish tutor here in Germany, during which time the focus will move over to conversation and writing. There's a lot to cover in just two weeks in preparation for his arrival, and I might end up completely unable to say or understand anything in conversation, but I'm just going to dive into the deep end and hope for the best when the time comes anyway. I have no idea what the teacher's going to say when I remind him that I've only been learning for 4 weeks by then (lol). Here are some of the major areas I'll be throwing myself headlong into: - phonetics, grammar, rhythm and intonation, Spanish-English translation, mScriptorium (i.e. music and writing), learning songs and lyrics, poetry, blind shadowing, chorusing and repetition after native speakers, active listening and review, reading aloud, singing (and a little guitar playing too ;) ), dialogue building, vocabulary expansion, more "study-and-click", and recurring clausal adverbial patterns such as "linking phrases". And like Secret Squirrel or Inspector Gadget (more childhood cartoon heroes of mine), I have just the secret weapon up my sleeve (or more appropriately, in my guitar case) for the job - LoMásTv - or as I like to call it..."Habla con Yabla". I'll endeavour to make my notes for the rest of this log a little shorter this time round, and will leave out the usual daily reading tests and experiments to try and fit more activities into each day. I'll post up the first summary this evening. ;) [edit: I've extended this experiment to 2 weeks now.] Edited by Teango on 01 June 2010 at 10:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5924 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 2 of 35 31 May 2010 at 7:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hey, I hope your second experiment goes well and all. If for some reason you want to
practice writing Spanish here, I'd be glad to write here for you. lol, Secret Squirrel and Inspector Gadget. :3 I never got to see Secret Squirrel when I was a child, but I did see Inspector Gadget... and they play Secret Squirrel on Boomerang anyway so I'm familiar with it. Good luck with your Spanish! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5558 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 3 of 35 31 May 2010 at 10:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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"El Mariachi", Day 1/14
(palabras, la música, y mucho más) SUMMARY - a detailed comparison of Spanish and English IPA and pronunciation [1.5h] - background research on Spanish languages [1.5h] - grammar [1h] - pronunciation [0.5h] - background listening (music) [2h] - TV ("El Internado") [0.5h] ———————————————————— Time spent actively studying Spanish today: 4.5 hours Total time studying Spanish altogether: 95.5 hours Sum total of Spanish study and immersion: 123 hours NOTES This week I'll be taking things easier. From tomorrow onwards, my primary goal each day will be to complete half an hour of study for each of 12 different activities I've got lined up; and my secondary goal will be to spend more time on what I consider to be the most useful or interesting areas that day. ¡Búscalo! is great, by the way, and I'd thoroughly recommend it as a beginner-intermediate grammar reference. Edited by Teango on 01 June 2010 at 10:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5558 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 4 of 35 01 June 2010 at 10:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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"El Mariachi", Day 2/14
(palabras, la música, y mucho más) SUMMARY Study-and-click L&R: 1/1 hour ("Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal" by J. K. Rowling) Yabla: 1.5/1.5 hours (4/4 videos, 0/0 songs, and some initial acclimatisation and research) Note: this section is for active study - the first number indicates how many hours I did today; the second is a subtotal for this experiment so far. ———————————————————— Background listening: 0.5 hours (music videos, audiobook) TV: 1 hour ("El Internado") Note: this section is for lighter background and immersion activities today, I don't count these hours in my study totals. ———————————————————— Total time today actively studying Spanish: 2.5 hours Total time spent studying Spanish during this experiment: 7 hours Total time actively studying Spanish so far: 98 hours Grand total of Spanish study and immersion: 127 hours [16 days] NOTES I've been really exhausted and listless the last couple of days. Perhaps it's something to do with the recent dark spell of weather and the torrential rain. However I was greeted with a little ray of sunshine in the shape of my digital voice recorder that finally arrived today, and I'm already looking forward to using this fancy little gadget to record sessions with my tutor later on. As regards to starting with a tutor next week, I've given it a lot of thought these last couple of days, and have decided now to extend this phase to 2 weeks instead. It's far more realistic given such a large workload, and it will give me a little more breathing space to try and realise my goals during this time. I think that LoMásTv (Yabla) is a brilliant website, and I just wish there were sites like this for a wider range of languages, such as Russian, Japanese and Irish. For example, today, I learned the word "flautas" (flutes), but in a much richer contextual setting where the cook in the video describes this traditional Mexican dish and you get to see these small fried rolled-up tortillas that resemble flutes. It's almost like I'm in the kitchen with her, learning how to cook, and I feel much more immersed in the culture of it all. :P After trying to juggle a dozen different activities, and noting down the times I spent on each, I quickly realised that this was a rather silly way to go about things when I could just as easily use Yabla for almost everything and line up all the activities around one video at a time instead (starting with the easiest in the list). So here's a quick run-down of the main activities I aim to cover in each video in future: - active listening, - translation, - grammar reference, - repetition, - shadowing, - reading aloud, - scriptorium, - "linking" words and phrases, - dialogue building, - flashcards, - real-time interpreting, - listening game at the end of each video. The only areas where I won't be using Yabla during this experiment will be my ongoing studies with the "study-and-click" method (there's plenty of Harry Potter left to go) and pronunciation training with "Pronounce it Perfectly in Spanish". I'll be working on one specific video separately for prosody training (I'm going to look for a good one tonight), and will also incorporate music videos for fun in the hope of learning off a few choruses by the end of the fortnight. On a little note aside, I was delighted to discover my slow-cooker has instructions in Spanish inside, and I'm now tempted, much like Meramarina described in one of her earlier posts, to scour the kitchen in search of more Spanish appliances and foodstuffs tonight. :) Edited by Teango on 01 June 2010 at 10:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7105 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 5 of 35 02 June 2010 at 9:30am | IP Logged | ||
Yabla do offer a similar service for French, German and English. The Spanish one has expanded since I last looked (which was a few years ago) to offer s separate subscription for adults and younger learners which seems a good idea to me. It looked (and still does) an excellent idea. I never got round to subscribing because at the time my Spanish learning was commute-based - i.e. mp3 player and PDA - so no internet connection. Keep us posted - I'm enjoying your learning logs. Andy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5558 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 6 of 35 02 June 2010 at 9:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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"El Mariachi", Day 3/14
(palabras, la música, y mucho más) SUMMARY Yabla: 4/5.5 hours (2/2 videos) ———————————————————— Background listening: 0.5 hours (music videos) ———————————————————— Total time today actively studying Spanish: 4 hours Total time spent studying Spanish during this experiment: 11 hours Total time actively studying Spanish so far: 102 hours Grand total of Spanish study and immersion: 131.5 hours [17 days] NOTES I started the day with a much-needed haircut, followed by a long list of errands in town, all of which consequently cut into my study hours today. However, with my head feeling stimulated and closer to fresh air, I am now much more ready to continue my Yablatastic journey into Spanish, and have reset the video count to start from the beginning. Intensity may once again have been overall quite low these last few days, but I'm not going to beat myself up over it, as I find it always takes a little while to find my feet and get started, and I have high hopes for blitzing those videos tomorrow. :) Edited by Teango on 02 June 2010 at 10:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5558 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 7 of 35 03 June 2010 at 10:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the good wishes, lynxrunner and Andy E!
@lynxrunner I'll stave off from writing this week; but hope to start putting down a few lines in Spanish next week. Please feel free to write in Spanish here in the meantime though, as I really enjoy reading people's posts in Spanish and it's excellent reading practice for me right now. :) A little thing I noticed about Inspector Gadget the other day is that the theme tune bears a very close resemblance to "In the Hall of the Mountain King" (Opus 23, composed by Edvard Grieg for Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt). And here's another beatboxing flute version of the Inspector Gadget theme tune for those musical impresarios amongst you out there. @Andy E I've seen the other Yabla sites, and will definitely subscribe to the French and German ones later. It would be so amazingly awesome though if they extended their range to more languages - just imagine the possibilities! I'll send them an email today and ask if they're considering doing this in the near future. Edited by Teango on 03 June 2010 at 10:31am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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