mgse Newbie United States Joined 6398 days ago 19 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 1 of 24 29 December 2009 at 3:50am | IP Logged |
At this time, I'll be focusing on Spanish only. If I make some serious progress, I may add another language in the latter half of 2010.
Motivation for Spanish
I've been eyeing Peru, Chile, Costa Rica, and other Central/South American countries for quite some time now and I think I'll have better luck convincing the future wife to come with if I can speak the language. Plus, I feel more comfortable (and a better guest) if I have some understanding of the language in the country I visit, especially when English is not commonly spoken.
Goals
I'm going to break this down by month so I can go back and review my progress based on what I had planned. I've studied some languages in the past (Swedish, French), but never past a basic stage. So not only will I be looking to learn Spanish, but also to pass the basic level in any language and figure out what learning techniques work for me.
January
My current plan
- 2 Assimil lessons per day (16 per week with the review lessons)
- Use the parallel texts found at www.childrenslibrary.org and try to go through at least 1 per week (preferably 2 - 3)
- Add 20 sentences to my SRS per day
- Continue with the Michel Thomas Advanced course
January Results
Assimil: 42 passive lessons, 10 active
Completed 2 children's books
441 sentences added to SRS
Michel Thomas completed
February
No specific completion goals. Instead, I'm going to pull from DaraghM a bit and aim for a specific amount of time. So for February: 40 hours of Spanish
February Results
32 hours of Spanish
Assimil: 89 passive (+30), 40 (+30) active completed
947 sentences in SRS (+506)
Teammates
DaraghM
nogoodnik
Edited by mgse on 04 March 2010 at 12:17am
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mgse Newbie United States Joined 6398 days ago 19 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 2 of 24 31 December 2009 at 1:55am | IP Logged |
Status
16 lessons of Assimil completed.
80 sentences in SRS (from Assimil, El niño sin nombre, and a parallel text book I have at home)
Michel Thomas: Basic course, Advanced Course #1, #2, and part of #3
Thoughts
The 'El niño sin nombre' story found here helped reinforce the simple past in Michel Thomas so that was good. IMO, being introduced to all the tenses with MT helps a lot as I'm reading or going through Assimil since I've already heard the explanation and can recognize the root verb. Same idea when I see something like "decirmelo" with the tacked on 'me' and 'lo' which initially confused the heck out of me since I couldn't find it in a dictionary.
As far as current challenges...
Vocabulary: Need more obviously. I can make it through simple stories (see above) without getting bogged down too much in the dictionary. But it needs to be very simple.
Pronunciation: I'm not focused on speaking at the moment, but I'm still trying to stress the correct syllable and know the sound of each letter. I'm usually correct, although I'm still taking longer than I'd like to recognize the 'g' sound (girar/gente vs gusta/ganar). Same with diphthongs. I know the rules, but I have to think about it.
Gender: Nothing like an exception such as 'la mano' to mess you up :)
Planning on an update Sunday night. Ideally, I'll have another 8 - 10 Assimil lessons completed with 80+ sentences added to my SRS.
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DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6153 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian
| Message 3 of 24 01 January 2010 at 4:10am | IP Logged |
You know you're a language geek when you sneak off at a New Year's Eve party at 03:00am to find an internet connection and see how your TAC team is doing. I'm so glad to be part of team F. If you've any Spanish questions, let me know. I've completed MT, and the passive wave of Assimil.
DaraghM.
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mgse Newbie United States Joined 6398 days ago 19 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 4 of 24 04 January 2010 at 3:13am | IP Logged |
May work a bit more tonight, but I want to get in a habit of updating this every Sunday so....
Status
24 lessons of Assimil completed (+8)
166 sentences in SRS (+86)
Made a first pass through El muchachito listo y el terrible y peligroso animal. Would like to spend a bit more time here though, primarily due to the use of "fue" conjugated from both the "ir" and "ser" verbs.
I haven't spent any time on MT lately which I need to rectify. Typically, I'd listen to it while walking the dog, but with the holidays and the temperatures (-2 F, -18 C currently) I haven't been out.
Thoughts
Assimil lessons are increasing in difficulty and work starts back up tomorrow (sad) so meeting my goals will be harder. I should be able to sneak in some MT and SRS time during work though. I should also be able to slip in some Assimil review of previous lessons, without the textbook, to make sure I can still pick the words out when listening.
Still aiming for 20+ sentences and 2 Assimil lessons (passive) per day for this week.
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nogoodnik Senior Member United States Joined 5571 days ago 372 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Modern Hebrew, Biblical Hebrew, Russian, French
| Message 5 of 24 05 January 2010 at 1:40am | IP Logged |
Hi Mgse-
I like your study plan and share your interest in South/Central America. I'm working on MT beginning Spanish right now and am enjoying it. The parallel text you linked to will be helpful for me also. We are going to make some amazing progress with Spanish this year!
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DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6153 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian
| Message 6 of 24 08 January 2010 at 10:44am | IP Logged |
No he estudiado mucho español en este año hasta ahora, porque paso mucho tiempo estudiando el idioma ruso, pero trato de escribir más.
I haven't studied a lot of Spanish so far this year, because I've spent a lot of time studying Russian, but I'll try writing more.
Vaya Equipo F.
Edited by DaraghM on 08 January 2010 at 10:45am
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mgse Newbie United States Joined 6398 days ago 19 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 7 of 24 11 January 2010 at 1:12am | IP Logged |
Status
38 lessons of Assimil completed (+14)
316 sentences in SRS (+150)
I met last week's goal of 14 Assimil lessons and adding 140+ sentences, plus I'm basically caught up in my SRS other than some sentences I added today.
Thoughts
The SRS can be a pain in the rear when I see 30+ sentences waiting, but it sure comes in handy with phrases like
[le] dio un mordida
por si acaso
where a word for word translation just makes me scratch my head.
I haven't logged my time, but I figure on weekdays I'm generally spending 1 hour on Spanish with Saturday/Sunday bumping that up to at least 2. Pretty happy with that so far. TAC (log + goals) helps with motivation and, perhaps more importantly, accountability.
Goals for the Upcoming Week
Listen through Michel Thomas Advanced Course 3 - 5. Keep meaning to do this, but since it hasn't been a goal, I've been putting it off.
Assimil: Complete lessons 39 - 49 so I can start the active phase.
SRS: Add 100+ sentences
Edited by mgse on 11 January 2010 at 2:18am
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Kinan Diglot Senior Member Syrian Arab Republic Joined 5568 days ago 234 posts - 279 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written)*, English Studies: Russian, Spanish
| Message 8 of 24 11 January 2010 at 11:02pm | IP Logged |
Good luck, but what is this team thing? there are teams and stuff?
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