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El Mariachi: Spanish experiment 2 | ||
Tags: Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5555 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 18 of 35 04 June 2010 at 12:11pm | IP Logged | ||
These are great, thanks. I'll print it out and review them on the flight over... ;) Edited by Teango on 04 June 2010 at 12:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5555 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 19 of 35 04 June 2010 at 10:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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"El Mariachi", Day 5/14
(palabras, la música, y mucho más) SUMMARY Yabla "LoMásTv": 6 hours Study-and-click: 1 hour ("Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal" by J. K. Rowling) Pronunciation: 1 hour ("Escuela Don Quijote - Jesús Baz" interview, and digital voice recorder) ———————————————————— Background listening: 1.25 hours (music) ———————————————————— Total time today actively studying Spanish: 8 hours Total time spent studying Spanish during this experiment: 24 hours Total time actively studying Spanish so far: 115 hours Additional light immersion with music and TV: 33.5 hours Grand total of Spanish study and immersion: 148.5 hours [19 days] NOTES I used to laugh when speech specialists advised in their academic papers that you hear a lot of what you say "through your bones". It just sounded funny. But the more I tried to perfect my pronunciation in Spanish this morning, the more I recognised the truth in what they were trying to say. Repetition, shadowing, and chorusing, are all great activities in their own right or in combination, but the thing is they're still perceived very subjectively (and often with overlap with the recorded examples). What I find works much better is to record my attempts to repeat a sentence or two on a digital voice recorder, and then compare it with the original track. This reveals all sorts of differences I would never have realised otherwise, without someone externally pointing it out to me first. I also think that one of the secrets to developing good communication and dialogue in any new language is internalising the native "linking phrases" (i.e. those frequently used expressions that connect noun phrases or that can open and close sentences). Every time I start to think in terms of phrasing and "mortar" in the natural flow of conversation, rather than individual units and "bricks" laid out according to specific grammar rules, my ability to listen and speak makes a small but worthy step forward. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5555 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 20 of 35 05 June 2010 at 8:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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"El Mariachi", Day 6/14
(palabras, la música, y mucho más) SUMMARY Yabla "LoMásTv": 3 hours Background listening: 0.75 hours (music) TV: 1.25 hours ("El Internado") ———————————————————— Total time today actively studying Spanish: 3 hours Total time spent studying Spanish during this experiment: 27 hours Total time actively studying Spanish so far: 118 hours Additional light immersion with music and TV: 35.5 hours Grand total of Spanish study and immersion: 153.5 hours [20 days] NOTES I realise now that what I'm essentially doing with Yabla is really "study-and-click" once again, but this time round with additional listening, speaking, dialogue building and writing thrown into the mix. Although videos are not as efficient as using an audiobook with texts (where you're exposed to more words per minute), this new happy medium does introduce me to a whole variety of cultural delights and a wide variety of Spanish speakers. And I think this is already helping me make the transition from the initial literary genre in audiobooks to practical speaking and listening in the real world. Edited by Teango on 05 June 2010 at 8:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5555 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 21 of 35 06 June 2010 at 8:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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"El Mariachi", Day 7/14
(palabras, la música, y mucho más) SUMMARY Yabla "LoMásTv": 4 hours ———————————————————— Total time today actively studying Spanish: 4 hours Total time spent studying Spanish during this experiment: 31 hours Total time actively studying Spanish so far: 122 hours Additional light immersion with music and TV: 35.5 hours Grand total of Spanish study and immersion: 157.5 hours [21 days] NOTES I noticed I was picking out more words in "El Internado" last night, which must mean my listening skills are starting to pick up too. I was particularly impressed that the bizarre word "gnomo" (which is how they translate "goblin" in my Harry Potter book, but probably means something closer to "gnome" usually), came up not once but twice last night. I'm also currently finding that cherry-picking "linking words and phrases" from my videos and putting these into Anki really helps with understanding telenovelas the next day. However, I'm still a million miles away from natural listening when it comes to watching Spanish TV. My listening is definitely improving, but slowly, and not without some misunderstandings along the way too. For example, I was relieved to discover today on LoMásTv that the consumption of watermelon seeds doesn't actually lead to some exotic gourdlike fever (as I first understood whilst reading without text), but rather to "fibra" (fibre, roughage), a much healthier result on the whole. Yet another case of mistaken identity with that difficult Spanish "b/v" to chalk up on the board... Edited by Teango on 07 June 2010 at 9:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5555 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 22 of 35 07 June 2010 at 10:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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"El Mariachi", Day 8/14
(palabras, la música, y mucho más) SUMMARY Yabla "LoMásTv": 8 hours Extra Pronunciation: 0.5 hours Background listening: 1 hour (music) ———————————————————— Total time today actively studying Spanish: 8.5 hours Total time spent studying Spanish during this experiment: 39.5 hours Total time actively studying Spanish so far: 130.5 hours Additional light immersion with music and TV: 36.5 hours Grand total of Spanish study and immersion: 167 hours [22 days] NOTES I had a few firsts on Yabla today...my first music video (which was a little sad but beautiful), and my first Venezuelan and Puerto Rican videos (where I got to meet the truly vivacious Dr Guacuco and his bucket of spicy shellfish). I was also thinking a lot about pronunciation and speaking skills today, and ended up doing more research than initially planned on the Internet this morning. Part of this was indubitably procrastination (for which I have a born talent), but all essentially in good faith to investigate ways of improving my spoken Spanish for future sessions. Hence a slightly longer post today on this topic... There's a whole sea of theories and practices abounding in this area, as you probably are already well aware, but certain rules of thumb seem to stand out from the rest. For example, initial temporary aural memory is very short and degrades quickly (my "phonological loop", the bit of audio I can hear echoing/repeating afterwards inside my head, is generally 1-2 seconds long at best), therefore to get the most out of any form of repetition, the first important guideline seems to be to follow each segment of audio as quickly as possible when practicing speaking. This leads to the second useful guideline. I find that it's not good enough just to "hear" the target audio, although this has its benefits over time of course. What I really need to do is actively "listen" to a section, and then compare and analyse the differences between the native speaker and my own currently abysmal yet "eagre to learn" efforts at pronunciation. Of course the best thing altogether is to be immersed in a Spanish speaking environment over several years, or have access to a gifted Spanish tutor or friend who can help you along with pronunciation each day. However, what should I do in the meantime to improve, I keep asking myself... A combination of repetition, shadowing, and chorusing is the first answer that comes to mind. But I'll be honest here. I know techniques like shadowing and chorusing work exceedingly well for a lot of people, but it's just not essentially enjoyable for me most of the time, which can often put me off the language and further study for a while (which isn't good at all in the long run). Perhaps, as Professor Arguelles maintains, it's simply a matter of developing the correct technique over a month of guided study. But it turns out that I'm just not that patient or self-disciplined I guess. Repetition with my finger constantly on the pause button, on the other hand ;), is laboriously dull, even with the most engaging variety of videos and a handy interface like Yabla. So what other approaches are out there? The quick answer is MANY. Some techniques focus more on speed and breadth, essentially speaking along or as closely as possible with the audio, whereas other techniques concentrate on depth and tend to be slower and more analytical or repetitive. Rather than going into the pros and cons of each approach (as it's largely "horses for courses" here, i.e. each person has their own preferences, when it comes to study techniques), I'll just list a few of the activities I did last week instead, and then briefly write down what I'll be trying out this week. Some of the activities I cut the rug with last week: - in-depth study of English and Spanish phonetics and phonology, including a detailed comparison of phoneme sets. - using a set video to practice pronunciation, focusing on 1-2 sentences at a time. - repetition, shadowing, and finally chorusing with whole videos (with and without pauses). - reading aloud to uncover problem areas whilst reciting texts (i.e. practising words or phrases I find difficult to say). - recording myself on a digital voice recorder, and then comparing this with the original audio file (very useful!). - exercises in "Pronounce It Perfectly in Spanish", a general coursebook in Spanish pronunciation. - following some of Olle Kjellin's chorusing ideas with sample sentences to improve overall rhythm, intonation and prosody. - breaking down sentences into phrasal "sense units", initially practising these in isolation, and then joining them up later with the audio to improve word stress and overall flow. Some more activities I'll trip the light fantastic with this week: - analysing and practicing new sections of a set video every day, paying particular attention to phrasing and intonation, with a view to reciting it all off by heart at the end of the week. - learning choruses of songs off by heart too, and singing along with them later in the background (i.e. blind chorusing with music). - blind shadowing the speaker in each of the Yabla videos (a bit like a co-rapping MC), ensuring I repeat only those words or phrases I can hear and understand clearly and just listening to the rest (with no reference to texts). - continuing to record my recital of the set video so far on a digital voice recorder, and then comparing this with the original audio file several times at the end of each day. Phew, I'm already out of breath just at the very thought of all this linguistic jitterbugging! I hope it all leads somewhere in the end... :) Edited by Teango on 07 June 2010 at 10:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5555 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 23 of 35 08 June 2010 at 8:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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"El Mariachi", Day 9/14
(palabras, la música, y mucho más) SUMMARY Grammar: 1 hour Vocabulary: 4 hours Background listening: 2 hours (music) ———————————————————— Total time today actively studying Spanish: 5 hours Total time spent studying Spanish during this experiment: 44.5 hours Total time actively studying Spanish so far: 135.5 hours Additional light immersion with music and TV: 38.5 hours Grand total of Spanish study and immersion: 174 hours [23 days] NOTES I had a bit of a brainwave today and decided to use a Firefox add-on to highlight the most frequently occurring Spanish words in each word class (according to some recommended word lists on the Internet) and use this to extract phrases for each of these words from my Yabla transcripts, as and when they pop up, for further review in Anki. Although I understand most of these words already, I think it's important to practise producing them in context as often as possible, with the aim of making common phrases more second-nature via review as well as through exposure to new material. This was a little tricky at first, as I needed to find a suitable program for the job, and then I had to find a way to create and import my own list of "frequent flyer" keywords. I eventually struck gold with a script called "Vocabulary Highlighter", and after a little snooping around, I found an SQLite database tucked away in the Firefox extensions folder and downloaded a simple interface to import my data. Now when I surf the Internet in Spanish, I can quickly switch on this little program, and it highlights any keywords that are in my current list of new words. I've combined this with another add-on called Yooper, that allows me to highlight words and phrases and copy them all in one go to a file later. This turns out to be quite handy for the sentence extraction side of things, and cuts out some of the cut-and-paste donkey work between websites and my flashcards. What would be really great though (and I'm sad to say I was unable find anything along these lines today), is a program or browser add-on that enables me to select text and put this directly into my Anki flashcards. Maybe someone a bit more Anki-savvy might have heard of something suitable for the task? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5555 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 24 of 35 09 June 2010 at 10:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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"El Mariachi", Day 10/14
(palabras, la música, y mucho más) SUMMARY Vocabulary: 1 hour Pronunciation: 1 hour Background listening: 2 hours (music) ———————————————————— Total time today actively studying Spanish: 2 hours Total time spent studying Spanish during this experiment: 46.5 hours Total time actively studying Spanish so far: 137.5 hours Additional light immersion with music and TV: 40.5 hours Grand total of Spanish study and immersion: 178 hours [24 days] NOTES Nothing much to say today, as I didn't really knuckle down to language study, and just dabbled a bit instead. With the end of the week fast approaching, I've really got to pick up the torch again and put in some real hours. I'm hoping tomorrow will be a more productive day. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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