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Spanish LR Log | ||
Tags: Listening-Reading (L-R) | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| parasitius Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6001 days ago 220 posts - 323 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Cantonese, Polish, Spanish, French | Message 57 of 88 26 June 2011 at 6:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks so much for the suggestions. I tried to investigate whether or not Harry Potter
really is easier by googling, and in line with my own intuition, it doesn't seem there is any difference in linguistic difficulty. The only difference is that Twilight has more adult content - romance. Also, in the bookstores Twilight is actually in Teen fiction not adult. I'm not sure how I'll proceed. Perhaps it would be worth it to quit after Twilight book 2 and do 1 Harry Potter book just to see if I have results more like yours. As for intensity: my best days are 3-4 hours (usually weekends). I think my 'average' is only about 2 hours though, as, after work I often find I'm fighting my way through a mental fog to keep going. Have you done any days of only 1 or 2 hours and felt that it really hurt you? It is hard for me to believe my intensity is hurting me, because the 4 hour days didn't feel significantly better than the 1 hour days. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| parasitius Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6001 days ago 220 posts - 323 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Cantonese, Polish, Spanish, French | Message 58 of 88 26 June 2011 at 8:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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By the way...
Were you able to get matching Harry Potter audio and books? I spent a lot of money acquiring all the Twilight books... and only belatedly realized that all my books are south american and the audio is all peninsular... :( I tried to see if there is an amazon Spain to get the books (since I've managed to order from Amazon Japan and Amazon China before) and there wasn't. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| July Diglot Senior Member Spain Joined 5276 days ago 113 posts - 208 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishB2 Studies: French | Message 59 of 88 26 June 2011 at 8:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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How annoying! If you want peninsular Spanish in the future, look for Casa del Libro or
Fnac.es (there are others, but these are the most common and I'm sure they ship abroad). In Spanish, I started out LR-ing 'The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe', and then later went onto Dan Brown books, like 'Angels and Demons'. The audio I found was South American Spanish, and the books have much simpler vocabulary than Twilight and HP, which I found surprisingly complicated and frustrating at first. So if you're having problems, something like that might be worth a try to get a foot on the ladder, and then work up to the hard stuff. I'm loving this log. It's inspired me to go back to LR again with a couple more books. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| parasitius Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6001 days ago 220 posts - 323 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Cantonese, Polish, Spanish, French | Message 60 of 88 26 June 2011 at 9:13pm | IP Logged | ||
Super valuable info for me. Thanks! While we're on the topic, you don't happen to know a legal audiobook source similar to audible.com (basically, very reasonable prices for downloadable)? Or any good audiobook source that ships abroad latin american or peninsular? I really want to be legal, but, figured I'd have to wait until I had the linguistic ability necessary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| supertom Diglot Groupie Joined 4997 days ago 87 posts - 114 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 61 of 88 27 June 2011 at 12:01am | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, a lot of replies! Didn't even know so many people liked my log:D
@ Parasitius: Ah, I really thought that the Twilight books would be more difficult. I do still think you should look into Harry Potter, at least the first book. I find the first book to be easier than the second book, probably find the same thing with the third book. I don't really know the difference between L-reading only for 2 hours a day or for 5 hours. I did find that I made good progress with my 10*5 hours project. This mainly because I saw a lot of vocabulary in a small amount of time. Now, I do my LRing different, also for a different purpose. Now LR isn't my main method for learning. It will be after these 60 days, but for now, I just use it to keep on reading and listening (to) Spanish. It helps me to see connections I just learned with Assimil an MT. But please note, at this moment I have done about 60 hours of LR. As you said you average about 2 hours a day, that means that you should have used LR for about 2 months. As you stated, you started only shortly before me, so probably haven't yet done 60 hours. I would say, keep on pluggin' the hours. It does come with time. And the more concentrated that timespan is, the less hours you need. About the book+audio, I did get matching sets. My book is probably a little older though, as it is from 1999. So I do see that they have corrected some things, and changed some other things. But overall it is 99,9% accurate. With a nice Spain Spanish accent. @July: Thanks to you too! You are saying that the Dan Brown books have an easier vocabulary than the HP series? Cool, I really want to read those in Spanish! I think working on 'easier' stuff is always good, certainly with LR. It gives you the time to really reap your results! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| supertom Diglot Groupie Joined 4997 days ago 87 posts - 114 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 62 of 88 27 June 2011 at 4:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Día 14/60
1,5 horas Assimil lecciónes 17,18 1 hora CD6 Michel Thomas Foundation 0,75 hora L2-L2 Harry Potter y la Cámara Secreta 0,25 hora Scriptorium Assimil 5,6 Total 1: 28 horas Total 2: 78 horas Assimil was pretty badass today. Lección 17 dealt with the imperfect tense. Lección 18 dealt with the perfect tense. Both with I haven't covered before. So it took me a little longer than 30 minutes per lesson to really understand it. I still need a lot of time to decipher sentences like 'se lo he explicado', because the construction is still not really natural to me. This is one of those things that come with time I think. A lot of reading will really help a lot for this I hope. Michel Thomas was good again. Covered come of the future tense, so that was nice. The difficulty is increasing with every CD I notice. Those last few are far more difficult than the first four or so. This has mainly to do with the fact that we now start to use more tenses and you thus have to remember more. Reading was good. Started to see a lot of the tenses I just learned. Can't decipher them fast enough yet though. That doesn't bother me too much though, I was glad with the result I already saw these 45 minutes. First step is to recognise the tenses when I see them during my reading. The next step would be to decipher them slowly. The last step is to decipher them automatically. I am now in step 1 and could do most of step two if the audio wouldn't keep on going. Scriptorium was good to. Did two lessons of Assimil. Also tried to construct some of the Spanish sentences from the English ones. This went pretty well also, even though this is part of the second wave. It is nice to see that this is also slowly starting to develop. AND!.. I am now finally at an average of 2 hours per day over the last 14 days. I messed it up by not doing Spanish for 5 days because of exams (went great), but now, I am back on track for my target of 2-2,5 hours a day. By the looks of it, I will start to creep towards the 2.5 hours per day if I manage to keep up this tempo! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| supertom Diglot Groupie Joined 4997 days ago 87 posts - 114 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 63 of 88 28 June 2011 at 2:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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Día 15/60
1 Hora Assimil lecciónes 19,20 1 Hora CD7 Michel Thomas 1.75 horas L2-L2 Harry Potter y la Cámara Secreta 0,25 horas Scriptorium Assimil 7,8 Total 1: 32 horas Total 2: 82 horas Assimil was didn't that much new stuff these two lessons. Mainly it was meant to increase my understanding of the past tenses learned in lessons 17-18. I am beginning to feel more comfortable with them. This is good. Tomorrow, I will probably only do lección 21 (review lesson) and a thorough review of all the previous lessons for a total time of one hour. Michel Thomas was good too. It began with reviewing the future tenses which aren't that difficult. Then it went on to the past tenses I am also working on in Assimil. This was really nice, as it gave me an opportunity to practice it actively and get a better understanding of it. Only one CD to go in the Foundation course! Come to think of it, I never went beyond CD 5 with Michel Thomas. That is possibly the reason why I hadn't yet seen any other tense apart from the present. Scriptorium was just scriptorium. The good thing is that the sentences are getting longer. I try to read aloud a whole sentence and then to write it without looking at the text. So I have to really know what it says and remember how I write it. Good practice I think. Reading was awesome. I really needed a grammar base in order to further improve on my reading/listening ability. There were just so many constructions that I didn't understand since I didn't know any grammar. Now, because I have learned some past and future grammar, I can make much more out of what I read. I also noticed that when I get a firm grip on the future and past tenses, 90% of all the grammar problems I encounter will be solved. The tenses that I than not yet know, don't come around that often. Nice to notice, at it fills a very big hole in my reading/listening ability. If I now manage to complete 3.5 hours every day for the next four days, and one more day of 4 hours, I will have put in 100 hours of Spanish in my first 30 days! AWESOME! If I get to this milestone, I will write a small report about it :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| supertom Diglot Groupie Joined 4997 days ago 87 posts - 114 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 64 of 88 29 June 2011 at 7:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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Día 16/60
1 hora Assimil lección 21 + review of 1-20 1 hora CD8 Michel Thomas Foundation 0.75 hora L2-L2 Harry Potter y la Cámara Secreta 0.50 hora L2 reading Harry Potter y Cámara Secreta 0.25 hora Scriptorium Total 1: 35,5 horas Total 2: 85,5 horas Assimil was good. Just took an hour to do lesson 21 (review lesson) and to really review al the previous lessons. Was good. Read aloud all the dialogues. In my opinion, my pronunciation is pretty good, but I guess that is just my ignorance;) Also, I don't have a lot of problem reading aloud the dialogues at speed, so that is nice to. My passive knowledge of (almost all) the words of the first 21 lessons is pretty good. I don't really come across things I don't recognise at least. Don't know if I know them all actively though. Still have problems with reading constructions like 'me lo ha dido' at speed, but I guess this is to be expected. It is improving, so it's all good. Finished Michel Thomas Foundation! I think the last three CD's of the foundation are really worth it. They cover most (I guess) of the future and past tenses and get you to use it. I really recommend it to everybody that wants to quick start their grammar knowledge and get a broad overview of what you are to learn. LR was good to. Still working on understanding difficult constructions at speed, so that takes time. Just reading again was nice to do too. Been a while since I last done this. I read my Spanish a lot faster now than two weeks before when I did it for the first time. Guess this has to do with the fact that I am now in the habit of just reading it and not worrying about what I don't understand immediately. I do, however, think that it may be beneficial to use the time that I just read to really decipher what the text says. And I don't mean vocab wise, but grammar wise. So that I really try to translate all the grammatical structures I come across to get some real good practice with this. Scriptorium was just that, not really exciting. Sentences are getting longer again, so that is good. Makes it more difficult to do it, but that's okay. Hopefully, at the 100hour mark in 4 days! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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