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Komma’s Log: Currently Spanish, English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Komma Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4057 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish | Message 25 of 37 12 May 2014 at 11:18am | IP Logged | ||
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Hey Cavesa,
THANKS for your post. I found it very motivating and helpful. 1. The textbooks I really hated the first one I used, but the ones I use now are actually great. I need some guidance through my learning. And with this guidance I can still decide to skip things here and there and do some grammar book exercises instead. However, without guidance I'm totally screwed up. i tried this in the beginning, but it just resulted in doing nothing because I didn't know where and how to start. And I'm afraid the amazon links don't work, so if you please could just state the titles again. Because I think that textbooks are just a guidance and I like to use grammar exercise books as well (at the moment I have practice makes perfect as you might have noticed and actually enjoy this..) 2. dialogues Thanks for your suggestions. i already use notes in Spanish, which I quite enjoy. Spanishpod is one I haven't tried yet. But as you said, there are so many resources, that I just can't do all of them :D 3. input Yeah the SC is great. And I actually like Lola Lago because it's on a level I can follow. At the moment I really do very intensive reading, but otherwise I would not get the storyline... It's not that much, but I still have some words per page I don't understand and most of them are important to get the gist of the story.. Thanks for motivating me, that it gets better with the next books I'll read. I totally agree. It was the same in English (and I started my first "real" book after having learned English for 4 or 5 years... and not like in Spanish for only one year.. however, it was very difficult at first but got better over time) I just feel that I need to start at least one book with intensive reading and while gaining new vocab etc. I can start more extensive reading. I already get some passages without looking words up I don't know, because I can guess the context without those words... But whenever i feel I don't understand enough I rather look up another word and try to figure it out than to just go on... I don't enjoy books when I don't understand them. And of course intensive reading is exhausting and time consuming and can sometimes be boring. But it's still better than understanding nothing, which is more frustrating. And when I looked up a word and memorize it and it appears again and I know what it means, I'm quite happy that I learned something :D 4. Listening thanks for reminding me of the cervantes library. That's one example of the thing I mentioned before.. There are so many resources that I just forget some of them or don't have the time to go through everything :D and one of course does not have to do everything, but one should at least give it a try. So, thanks again for your post. It was very motivating and I agree with all of it even if I still follow my multi-texbook approach (which I see mostly as a guidline and still do almost everything you also pointed out) And I will read through your log as well at some time ;) It's on my to do list to read through all of my teammates logs and post helpful stuff as well. However, that takes some time, so... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 26 of 37 12 May 2014 at 3:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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The titles of the series:
Gramática A1-A2/B1/B2 published by Anayla ELE En and Gramática de uso del espanol A/B/C, not sure by whom published They are really good aside a textbook or on their own. Just careful there is Spanishpod and Spanishpod101, which are different and the first is more expensive, I believe. The 101 languages are good (and the publisher has got the small languages as well, yay!) I agree reading all the teammates log and so on takes time. It is a nice thing, helpful and motivating, but it should never cut down the actual language learning time :-D 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| AlexKastani Bilingual Diglot Newbie United States Joined 3850 days ago 22 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English*, Estonian* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 27 of 37 12 May 2014 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm looking forward to following your log! It's good to see a current university student
studying Spanish as well. I just finished my Master's degree, during which it was really hard to find time for Spanish.. I'm starting another program in August, so I'm really hoping I'll be able to keep up my language studies :| Best of luck with your Spanish! If you haven't done it yet, you should try Notes in Spanish (notesinspanish.com) :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Komma Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4057 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish | Message 28 of 37 13 May 2014 at 10:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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thanks cavesa for telling me the titles again.
And for pointing out that there is a difference between Spanishpod and Spanishpod101.. i didn'T know that :) @Alex thanks for your post. Yeah it's really difficult to maintain studying Spanish while at university. However, I really like it to study some Spanish at the end of the day. It's so different from what I do, so it makes me relax. However, when I don't find the way to do any studiying of Spanish, I'm really upset about it. Not because I missed a day to improve, but because university then is so awful much and annoying :D I'm really looking forward to my holidays.. Not that I don't like chemistry, but it's so much to do and not all of that is easy work and I don't like hard work :D But who does? this is life, isn't it? Haha :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Komma Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4057 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish | Message 29 of 37 18 May 2014 at 10:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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So, it's Sunday again, so here's my review for the last week. I've marked my goals green and red in the original goals post, so for an
overview head over to page 3 and have a look at the post for the week of Sunday 11.5.14-Sunday 18.5.14. I've had really much RL-stuff going on and also the nice weather, so I just didn't complete all the goals. However, I'm very happy that I continued with anki every day and that I at least did the goals that are for the Super challenge. I also read very slow in Spanish, so I don't get much else done with having the reading goal at 10 pages :D However, I manage to do some pages without looking words up. Or actually I did it and just didn't care for some words because I had a phase where looking up was boring. I do like it to learn new words, but sometimes reading that slow is annoying :D For the next week I will take the uncompleted goals and only add some reading in Spanish and reading and watching in English... If I manage to do more, that's nice, but next week will be as full with university as this one I suppose... Or at least the weather is so nice that I'm rather outside with my friends instead of watching, reading or studying inside... So, here are my new goals for the week: Sunday 18.5.14-Sunday 25.5.14 Spanish Courses - 'Spanish with System' chapter 3 - Assimil lesson 1 grammar - irregular verbs present tense (with practice makes perfect and anki) - general use of present tense (practice makes perfect) Vocabulary - review the words I put into anki every day Listening - Notes in Spanish (NiS): episodes 1 again and more intensive (vocab, useful stuff etc) - NiS: episodes 5+6 just listening Reading - Lola Lago 10 pages 10/10 + 6 pages of "Muy lejos de Madrid" + 2 pages of "Harry Potter 1" English Reading - 50 pages of HP5 75/50 Watching - 90 minutes of film or series... I think this is much easier to accomplish :D 125/90 Edited by Komma on 25 May 2014 at 10:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Komma Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4057 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish | Message 30 of 37 25 May 2014 at 10:44am | IP Logged | ||
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So, it's Sunday again and I completed all my goals already, so I thought I post now
instead of this evening. The only thing I didn't complete 100% was the anki goal. I just fogot to review on Monday. Now, i've got a reminder in my phone :D I'm very happy though that I completed everything else and that I reduced my goals. That way I do something. It's enough I think. Like this it fits into my university timetable :) For the grammar part I crossed out the irregular verb training from the Practice makes perfect book. Firstly, I do the conjugations with anki and for only the present tense it's not that difficult to remember like this. Secondly, PMP is way too hard for me at the moment. I don't find it useful to to conjugations with verbs I don't even know yet and I don'T want to learn them through a stupid wordlist with not connection to any context. And I would have to do this when I want to continue like this with PMP. I like their explanations but the excercises are quite above my level. I considered buying the grammar exercise books recommended by cavesa because they are available per level. I also have another grammar exercise book for beginners which I might try out. For the next week I want to focus on Spanish reading. Mainly because of the SC :D I finished the first Lola Lago and now started on another easy reader named "muy lejos de Madrid - el primo rafael" Until now I read the intro about the Spanish civil war which was kind of hard to understand because of some "war-vocab" which I then had to look up.. However, I didn'T put it into anki because I'm not interested much in this kind of vocabulary. I don't know whether this book is something I enjoy. I read a page of some other novels which are graded for A1, but I found them not very understandable and I don't think I'd enjoy their topics. I think I'll buy an easy "real" Spanish novel (for kids ^^) next week or so and try this out. I thought about Charlie and the Chocolate factory (as recommended by Stelle). I only know the film and enjoyed it, so why not try reading it. I know that this is not "original Spanish". But I'm not quite familiar with Spanish literature, so I want to start with something I know. And translations are not always bad. The grammar structure should be right when it was translated by a good native translator and concerning some language based jokes which are lost in translation, I don't care much. However, If you have more recommendations on native Spanish novels which are instersting and easy to understand then just tell me :D I'd be very thankful 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Komma Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4057 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish | Message 31 of 37 25 May 2014 at 11:06am | IP Logged | ||
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Sunday 25.5.14-Sunday 1.6.14
Spanish Courses - Teach yourself/Sprachkurs plus chapter 5 & 6 - Assimil lesson 2 & 3 Vocabulary - review the words I put into anki every day Listening - Notes in Spanish (NiS): episodes 2 again and more intensive (vocab, useful stuff etc) Watching -Destinos episode 11 Reading - 20 pages & nbsp; 23/20 English Reading - 25 pages of HP5 27/25 Watching - 90 minutes of film or series... 170/90 __________________________________________ I know that 20 pages of reading might not be a real focus but I'm still very slow so this is something I can achieve. When I can to more than that's good. And I also want to continue with the rest but take it slow. So it's just one episode of Destinos and one episode of NiS. The beginning assimil lessons are quite easy for me and the teach yourself course didn't have much new either in the last lessons. Maybe that'll change a bit. I could also do a small review session where I try to translate the sentences from German. I might start a translation category.. I skipped grammar because I don't know what to do there. I think I'll try the practice book for beginners and buy the A1 practice book recommended by cavesa. I thought about making anki grammar cards, but I don't know how. I just think only reading and learning rules is not all. It is important to understand but with that I won't be able to use it. However, I'd be fine at the moment to understand and know the rules, so I understand what I read better (I'm still confused about past times. I mostly understand the verb as the stem is the same, but I'm still not used to it because I haven't started the past tenses yet). I might be a bit too impatient about grammar. It needs time to sink in and learning it is quite hard. In English my grammar is just how I think it feels right. However, I think that I might often use many "german"-like structures because I don't "know" whats right. And I don't really trust my "feeling" for grammar in many cases. Enough boring blabla :D I better get started with anything now instead of writing novels here :D Edited by Komma on 01 June 2014 at 8:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4142 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 32 of 37 25 May 2014 at 12:40pm | IP Logged | ||
The best part about translated books is that it's easy to get a parallel English version to help you understand. Charlie and the Chocolate isn't A1 level easy. But I do think it's a good novel for Spanish-learners to tackle. I started Charlie before I understood the past tense, and I did find that I needed to jump ahead a bit in my grammar study to understand the preterite conjugations. With a side-by-side English copy, I definitely think that it's accessible. The coolest thing about novels is that they get easier. The first few pages are *hard*, but every chapter is just a little bit more doable. When I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I pulled out my old English copy. I read a page in English, and then a page in Spanish. I made sure that I understood, and noted any new vocabulary that kept popping up (grito, for example, let to me adding "gritar" - to yell - to my anki deck). I didn't look up *every* new word, just the ones that I couldn't guess from context after reading the English page first. The first time I read, I skipped over the poems/songs in the book because they were too frustrating. It took me a long time to read, but it was fun and motivating, so I tried to do 5-10 pages every day. Then, when I finished, I read it again, this time extensively, from start to finish. By the time I got to end of my second read, it was very easy to understand and my speed improved enormously. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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