Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4142 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 49 of 384 28 August 2013 at 12:41pm | IP Logged |
Lorren wrote:
Looks like you're doing very well! I'm sure that you'll be speaking quite well by the time you get to
Spain!
Are your Skype partners from Spain? I've noticed that there is a huge difference between the Spanish of Latin
America and the Spanish of Spain. |
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Thanks Lorren! Most of my Skype partners are from Spain, although I do have one from Argentina. I'm consciously
trying to learn the Spanish accent, but I keep forgetting and pronouncing c/z as "s" instead of "th".
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Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4142 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 50 of 384 29 August 2013 at 12:28pm | IP Logged |
total for yesterday: 156 minutes
Talk to someone: 60 minutes
- Skype tutoring session (conversational)
listen to something: 50 minutes
- Notes in Spanish: 5 intermediate podcasts. I've now finished all 46 intermediate podcasts. While the first few
required deep concentration, by the end I could easily understand every word - so I guess they work! I'm going to
try out the advanced podcasts today, although with 90+ available, I'm not sure that I'll listen to all of them. I
think that this week I'll listen to two or three every day, and if I find them easy enough, then I'm going to look for
a native Spanish podcast at the end of this week. I do think that I have to push myself to move beyond listening
for learners, so that I can start training my ear to understand rapid-fire Spanish.
read something: 10 minutes
- I read the first chapter of Harry Potter. It was really tricky - much more difficult than the last two novels that I
read. I think I need to get my hands on a French or an English copy so that I can read parallel texts.
write something: no, not yesterday
practice vocabulary: 36 minutes
- anki
- Duolingo (which I still enjoy, but which seems to be getting weirder and weirder in terms of sentences)
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Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4142 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 51 of 384 30 August 2013 at 4:12am | IP Logged |
Only 47 minutes today, due to a variety of unforeseen circumstances! 30 min skype conversation and 17 min on
anki.
I definitely will NOT make 75 hours for the month of August, since it would mean 4 hours each tomorrow and
Saturday. Highly doubtful! But hey...it could happen. No?
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Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4142 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 52 of 384 31 August 2013 at 4:46am | IP Logged |
total for today: 198 minutes
talk to someone: 90 minutes
- Skype tutoring session
- Skype language exchange
read something: 20 minutes
- Harry Potter
listen to something: 45 minutes
- Destinos episode 31
- Spanish music playlist
write something: 10 minutes
- imperfect verbs
practice vocabulary: 33 minutes
- anki
- duolingo
Tomorrow's the last day of August, and I'm currently at a hair over 70 hours. To hit my goal of 75 hours for the
month, I'll need to put in nearly five hours tomorrow. HIghly unlikely, especially since I don't have a Skype session
scheduled for tomorrow. Well, we'll see what happens! I got some Spanish films from the library - maybe I'll try
watching one tomorrow. I expect it to be very difficult, but I'll see if I can follow it.
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Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian
| Message 53 of 384 31 August 2013 at 11:49am | IP Logged |
Awesome progress, Stelle!
What films did you get? In general, I'd say the films are more difficult than tv series (as you have less time to get used to those speakers in particular, which is a huge diffence in the beginnings) but every film is different. Did you get european or latinamerican films?
Btw getting five hours by watching films is very easy. Unless you have something time consumming planned, you can reach the goal :-) And being immersed for 5 hours should already bring fruits.
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Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4142 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 54 of 384 31 August 2013 at 4:32pm | IP Logged |
Cavesa wrote:
Awesome progress, Stelle!
What films did you get? In general, I'd say the films are more difficult than tv series (as you have less time to get
used to those speakers in particular, which is a huge diffence in the beginnings) but every film is different. Did
you get european or latinamerican films?
Btw getting five hours by watching films is very easy. Unless you have something time consumming planned, you
can reach the goal :-) And being immersed for 5 hours should already bring fruits. |
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Thanks Cavesa! I have 3 Spanish movies (from Spain):
Volver
Pan's Labyrinth
Broken Embraces
Basically, the only 3 Spanish films from my library. (I can't deal with dubbed. I know that they can be helpful, but I
just hate dubbed films/TV.) I'll watch Volver (which I've heard good things about and have never seen) and Pan's
Labyrinth (which I've already seen in English), but I'm honestly not sure about Broken Embraces. My thought is to
watch each movie 3 times: once in Spanish with English subtitles, once in Spanish with Spanish subtitles and once
in Spanish without subtitles. I don't think I'll spend 5 hours watching today - but I should be able to watch a
movie for the first time.
What you said about TV shows - getting used to speech patterns - makes a lot of sense. I'm trying to finish up
with Destinos so that I can start a TV show. It's a bit of a slog right now...Destinos is slow-moving and repetitive.
But I do think that it's a really good tool for improving sentence structure and vocabulary. And I've already
watched 32 episodes, so I'm more than halfway done.
When I finish, I think I'm going to watch Missing - it's 12 episodes, and I've heard really good things about it!
http://www.dramafever.com/drama/4253/1/Missin
g/
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Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4142 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 55 of 384 01 September 2013 at 3:03am | IP Logged |
I was alone all day today, with nothing pressing to do, so I really buckled down - and I made my goal of 75 hours
for the month of August! I'm really happy about this.
With school starting next week, I don't think that I'll be able to keep up this pace. But I like a goal of 60 hours for
the month of September - with the idea in the back of my head that 75 would be better.
302 minutes today. Won't be doing this every day, that's for sure!
talk to someone: no
listen to something: 200 minutes (LOTS of listening today)
- 3 episodes of Destinos
- 2 podcasts (Notes in Spanish)
- first episode of the Spanish show Missing. Confession: even though I *tried* to just listen, I missed a lot. I
ended up reading most of the English subtitles, so I only counted half the time. But I think it will get easier as I
keep watching, and I'm definitely challenged by the speed - which I needed. It's a very compelling show. I'd watch
it even if I weren't learning Spanish!
read something: 37 minutes
- Depsereaux
- Harry Potter (*really* difficult for m)
write something: 31 minutes
- italki notebook entry
- Practice Makes Perfect (verbs)
practice vocabulary: 34 minutes
- anki
- duolingo
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Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian
| Message 56 of 384 01 September 2013 at 3:49am | IP Logged |
Don't give up. When I began watching in Spanish, I didn't even have the Spanish subtitles or any other(didn't find them and I was too lazy to dig deeper) and I felt quite lost at the beginning. I was getting just the very basic gist and usually thanks to the video. After just a few episodes, it became much better. And at the end of season 1, I understood approximately 95% and I dare say my Spanish isn't better than yours, especially my active skills suck and you speak much better! So, don't give up.
And perhaps you should consider the Spanish subtitles soon. The English ones are good as the real beginning but they can easily draw too much of your attention and they take away a lot of the immersion. And the immersion is really awesome, I caught myself thinking in Spanish a bit longer and longer after each episode!
Btw what kind of show is Missing? Solving crimes? Mysteries? Drama?
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