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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4766 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes  Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 49 of 83 19 February 2015 at 6:30am | IP Logged |
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Lusan, you have a good point. I probably like García-Márquez because I'm pretty old fashioned and boring myself.
In truth, I've found him to be a great source of sentences with unfamiliar vocabulary, probably because of the rare, literary words in his writing. I also occasionally find sentences of exquisite beauty. There are many, many great authors I could be using, but maybe I like Garcia-Marquez because of the very things you apparently dislike his style for. Trust me, I just spent a few days working with a bunch of other authors in a deck. I just didn't find enough interesting sentences to keep the deck up. I switched my "gabo" deck back in and now I'm grinding through the backup of cards. When I put a bunch of authors through an online readability program, and it consistently showed García-Márquez as the hardest of the writer I tested. By the way, I tested Allende, Vargas-Llosa, Octavio Paz (close), Pérez-Reverte, and a bunch of translated stuff. When I first started trying to read Spanish, I tried García Márquez, since he was famous and because I had enjoyed 100 Years of Solitude in translation. I failed miserably, of course, and I sort of built up in my head that if you can read gabo, you can read anything. Hopefully he has all of the common, first 20000 in the frequency list, words along with his more rare terms. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4766 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 50 of 83 14 March 2015 at 4:08am | IP Logged |
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I wrote a big post this morning that disappeared into the ether somewhere.
I continue to move forward through fsi. I have learned that I cannot depend on my hour devoted to Spanish at night. There are too many distractions. I got bogged down doing fsi, but never stopped. I start Unit 26 tomorrow. Recently, I have begun to make good progress again. There are three reasons for the recent improvement. First, I have started doing pieces of FSI during my lunch and my morning break, I can get in a half hour of fsi. I really think fsi works better in bigger chunks than this, but this is the schedule I have. Next, I am not trying to do FSI only when I'm tired at the very end of the day. Finally, for whatever reason, I've gotten much better at doing FSI drills. Some units are easier than others, but I also think that I have gotten better at doing these types of lessons. I find I can move through many of the drills with pretty good success after only a couple trips through. I actually doubt that I will finish before summer, but I might actually be able to do so. One unexpected effect of doing fsi is that it has destroyed my Tagalog. I watch a couple of hours of Tagalog soap operas every night, and I have no trouble understanding them, but when I try to speak, it all comes out in Spanish. I'm going to the Philippines this summer and I will need to speak Tagalog there. My wife is a Filipina, and the solution to my weak Tagalog is obvious, but I want to finish FSI also. B1 in Spanish looks like it is within reach, and I don't want to lose my focus on Spanish until I am solidly in the "B's". I suspect that after FSI, I can move forward with reading, L-R, and shadowing... But I'm not there yet. Edited by sfuqua on 14 March 2015 at 5:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4766 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 51 of 83 18 March 2015 at 8:29pm | IP Logged |
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Ok, I'm on Unit 27.
Doing FSI in little pieces throughout the day is working well. I've gone back to the one drill at a time technique, and doing it this way means that I am getting to be about as good as I'm going to get after 3 times through. In an ideal world I would do more review of earlier drills, but I hope that the FSI course will have enough review built in to make up for my lack of review. I've swung my garcia-marquez deck out of anki and slipped in a big deck of movie subtitle cards. I was starting to get a little bored with GGM's cards; I definitely can read his simpler stuff already even after only 2000 cards. I've done 10500 cards in anki, some of which were not very good, and I am definitely at the point where I can read many books extensively. I'm going to stay with anki a little longer. One thing good about subtitle cards is that they have a bigger variety of verb tenses than the narrative text in "novel" cards. Subtitles also are written in simple language; they are meant to be read quickly, and most of them avoid regional slang. I kind of think that subtitles might make good sentences for shadowing or chorusing. I sort of thought that doing enough novel cards would eliminate the need to formally study the language of subtitles, but I still find things I need to learn in the subtitles. Subtitles are usually meant to imitate spoken language, and there are enough differences to make them useful for a while. I built my deck out of the first 10 movies in the imdb top 250. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tangleweeds Groupie United States Joined 3576 days ago 70 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Irish, French | Message 52 of 83 20 March 2015 at 7:01am | IP Logged |
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I've enjoyed reading your log, as I'm still putting together my first independent language
learning process, and I've had trouble maintaining consistency through life's ongoing complications. So it's been inspiring to me to see how you persist in finding places to fit your studies into a complicated adult life. Perseverance for the win. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5866 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 53 of 83 20 March 2015 at 7:26am | IP Logged |
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I agree that you can pull tons of vocab from Garía Marquez's works (though much of it will probably not ever be useful). It always amazes me the range of vocabulary i come across when reading their books. Though for me personally, their books are pretty hit or miss. A lot of the topics in their books are interesting to me (lots of discussion on people in power, for example), but some books are just really dry. 100 Years of Solitude is one of my favorite books ever, though, and tops my list of favorite Spanish books (though Eva Luna is also up there).
Speaking of which, i find Isabel Allende's writing on the whole more interesting, or rather the stories are generally more captivating. But (in my opinion) some of García Marquez's stuff are just literary masterpieces (and others are rather dull). FSI does have a lot of review built in, i'm not sure where you're at in your Spanish level now, you're certainly not approaching FSI as a beginner like i did so you might not need all of the reviews. But it definitely wouldn't hurt. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5477 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 54 of 83 22 March 2015 at 11:34am | IP Logged |
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Hi sfuqua,
I've just read through around 80% of your log and I find it very motivating. The main things that I find motivating is that you are very consistent- despite your self-doubt you press on, and when one reads your log entry after entry in quick succession like time-lapse photography you can see the bigger picture unfold before your eyes. You've come a long way! Great job, keep up the consistent effort! PM 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4766 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 55 of 83 27 March 2015 at 5:10pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the nice thoughts.
I'm halfway through the units in terms of units, although unit 30 is probably is closer in terms of material. I try not to post until I have some insight or I have something to report. I can report that I at last am on to unit 28. Unit 27 was long, not too difficult, and not too interesting. I was familiar with the grammar, in a Michel Thomas, "knowing" sort of was, but it took some time to get it all straight at FSI speed. There were also the frequent family priority interruptions that I mentioned before. I've been considering dropping anki to concentrate on FSI; keeping up all the reviews takes some time. I may just drop my big deck and start over. The idea of dropping the big deck makes me happy. I could also just set then number of new cards and reviews lower so that I get through it during morning coffee. After all, I can't really be barking FSI drills at my wife while she is trying to talk about family plans for the day... FSI is really at it's best when it does to me what the last unit did, it forces me to learn thoroughly something that I "kind of know" already. A learner like me lacks the hours of free conversation practice that you need to actually be fluent in the language and be able to speak it with native speakers without feeling self conscious. FSI brings that goal closer. I'm pretty sure I could be an awesome tourist already, you know the guy who gets off the plane, negotiates the correct fare for the taxi, then goes to the night club and flirts successfully with the hot local woman (that is if I wasn't old as old as the hills and married). I bet I'm still at a level where I would sound like a fool quite often. I really think that FSI might work best if you did it at the same time as you were doing a bunch of L-R or other extensive comprehension tasks. While doing L-R takes some organization to get materials together, I have plenty of books around the house that I can more or less read, so I could easily replace anki with extensive reading; I could just as easily be reading as doing anki reps many times during the day. Reading would only have an indirest effect on listening comprehension, which is the area that I feel like I am not exercising at this point. Just listening to Spanish in the car seems like a slow way to go. I know I'm a little like the toddler who says she wants to be a doctor when she grows up, but once I finish FSI, I have a few plans. 1) I've really got to get to Mexico, or somewhere else that speaks Spanish. My family always goes to the Philippines when we go overseas, but I really need to go somewhere and get through a day speaking Spanish before I'll really believe that I know it. 2) I think I may work though Platiquemos quickly alternating with days of L-R, shadowing, reading aloud, and listening my way through some books. I really would like to drive my passive skills up into the C range. 3) I will definitely work through the Gramatica de Uso del Espanol that James29 has been working through. I'm considering starting it sooner than when I'm done with FSI. I might do it instead of Platiquemos when I get done with FSI also. Anyway I fight on. I have a week's vacation coming up, maybe I can do two units that week. Edited by sfuqua on 28 March 2015 at 1:47am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4766 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 56 of 83 01 April 2015 at 6:44pm | IP Logged |
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I'm on to unit 29 today. Unit 28 was fast and easy. It covered material I am familiar with, indirect commands, but somehow a little light went on in my head about the subjunctive. For me, figuring out when to use the subjunctive is a little like long division done as mental arithmetic; I know how to do it, but I can't do it very fast or accurately. Maybe doing unit 28 made the subjunctive more salient.
I've become more and more dissatisfied with anki lately. It seems like the default settings of new cards and reviews is too slow; I'm spending too much time reviewing and I'm not moving ahead fast enough. I know I can change the settings, or hit "easy" more often. I've experimented with extensive reading recently, and I found that I have more or less reached the goal I had for my anki deck -- I can read most books that are not high powered literature. I have difficulty sometimes of course, but I think I might be happier blasting ahead through a nonfiction book about Pablo Escobar than I would be reviewing random sentences in anki. While a book for native speakers is not as interesting as a trip to a foreign country, it is another way of getting rid of the training wheels for a while. Some people in the Superchallenge have said that it takes about 10000 pages of extensive reading to build C1/C2 level skills. That's a lot of pages, and I need to get started. I may dump anki and just read. Edited by sfuqua on 01 April 2015 at 6:46pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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