Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4146 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 25 of 384 15 August 2013 at 2:39am | IP Logged |
Total for today: 180 minutes
talk to someone: 80 minutes
- 30 minute tutoring sessions, 2 skype exchanges
listen to something: 22 minutes
- Notes in Spanish: 2 intermediate podcasts (also listened to veintemundos, but I
logged that under reading)
read something: 36 minutes
- Despereaux
- Tapas article on veintemundos.com - read it twice while listening to the audio
write something: 15 minutes
- notebook entry on italki
practice vocabulary: 27 minutes
- anki decks
- inputted a bunch of irregular verbs on anki
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Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4146 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 26 of 384 16 August 2013 at 3:12am | IP Logged |
total for today: 204 minutes
talk to someone: 60 minutes
- Skype tutoring session
listen to something: 41 minutes
- listening to que hiciste (song) over and over again while I translated it
read something: 45 minutes
- Despereaux
- tapas article twice - once slowly and looking up vocab, once with audio
write something: 27 minutes
- Practice Makes Perfect - verbs
practice vocabulary: 31
- anki
- Duolingo
Whew! My brain is tired!
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Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4146 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 27 of 384 17 August 2013 at 1:28pm | IP Logged |
total for yesterday: 166 minutes
talk so someone: 70 minutes
- brief Skype conversation
- one-hour Spanish class on Verbling (although - to be honest - I didn't do anywhere near the amount of talking
as I though I would)
listen to something: 46 minutes
- sang along to four songs (all of my "songs of the week" up to this point - I post a song with translated lyrics on
my blog every Friday)
- Destinos: episode 22 - to be honest, my attention is starting to waver. I feel like I should finish the series, but
there are still 30 episodes to go! I'm contemplating just buckling down and watching an episode every day for the
next month. I'm also contemplating jumping ship and starting an actual telenovela - I'm just not sure if I'm ready
for that yet.
read something: 15 minutes
- Despereaux. I think I'm going to finish this novel either today or tomorrow. I don't have a book waiting in the
wings. I wish that I'd ordered one a few weeks ago, since it takes several weeks for a Spanish-language book to
get here either through amazon or through library inter-loans. I guess I'll be reading a lot of articles next week.
write something: 22 minutes
- Practice Makes Perfect (verbs) - I need to do more actual writing. While grammar study is DEFINITELY helping
me with speaking right now, I think it's a bit disingenuous to do nothing but grammar work and call it "writing"
practice vocabulary: 13 minutes
- anki decks
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Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4146 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 28 of 384 18 August 2013 at 3:10am | IP Logged |
total for yesterday: 176 minutes
talk so someone: 45 minutes
- Skype language exchange (25 minutes)
- 20 minutes talking to my parents on Skype (they're learning Spanish too!)
listen to something: 48 minutes
- Destinos: episode 23
- Notes in Spanish: 2 intermediate podcasts
read something: nothing today - I think I'm putting of finishing my novel, since I don't have another waiting for
me
write something: 21 minutes
- Practice Makes Perfect (verbs)
practice vocabulary: 62 minutes
- anki decks - they took me about twice as long as they usually do! I don't know if I was slow, if I had a bunch of
review cards bunched together, or if my decks are just getting bigger
- played on Duolingo for a little over half an hour
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Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4146 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 29 of 384 19 August 2013 at 2:04am | IP Logged |
Total for today: 167 minutes
talk to someone: 30 minutes
- Skype conversation
listen to something: 56 minutes
- Notes in Spanish: 2 intermediate podcasts
- Destinos: episode 24
- sang along to youtube playlist (4 songs)
read something: 20 minutes
- just a few pages left. What will I read next?
write something: 30 minutes
- Practice Makes Perfect - I'm in the meat and potatoes of the preterite tense, and I'm hoping that this will really
help me during my tutoring session tomorrow! I asked Auri (my tutor) to push me with the past tense - let's hope
I don't regret that!
practice vocabulary: 31 minutes
- anki (both decks + inputting new material)
So right now I'm at 39.1 hours for the month of August. There are 13 days left in the month, and my first goal
was 75 hours in August. That means about 166 minutes of Spanish every day. Definitely doable, but I'm starting
to get a bit tired! I'm currently in tenth place in the six-week challenge. I don't think I'll be climbing any higher
than that, since the rest of the top 10 are a good 10+ hours ahead of me, but I'm really pleased with my
standing!
I'm also doing another challenge: the fall italki challenge. The goal there is to do 20 tutoring sessions in 6 weeks.
Not too tough for me - it just means doing 3 tutoring sessions per week instead of two.
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Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4146 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 30 of 384 20 August 2013 at 2:28am | IP Logged |
Total for today: 189 minutes
talk to someone: 90 minutes
- Skype exchange (30 minutes in Spanish)
- Skype tutoring session
listen to something: 22 minutes
- Destinos: end of episode 27 (skipped 25, 26 and 3/4 of 27 because they were all flashbacks)
- sang along to youtube playlist (4 songs)
read something: 24 minutes
- finished Despereaux. I'm kind of sad. I might read it again.
write something: 28 minutes
- Practice Makes Perfect verbs
- email to penpal
practice vocabulary: 25 minutes
- anki (both decks + inputting new material)
- looking up words I needed to tell a story before my tutoring session
Total for the challenge up until now: 42.25 hours
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Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4146 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 31 of 384 21 August 2013 at 4:14am | IP Logged |
total for today: 77 minutes
talk to someone: 18 minutes
- Skype exchange
listen to something: nope
read something: nope
write something: 13 minutes
- Practice Makes Perfect - preterite
practice vocabulary: 46 minutes
- anki decks
- duolingo
Much less intense day today!
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Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4146 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 32 of 384 21 August 2013 at 9:18pm | IP Logged |
I almost regret starting the six-week challenge so quickly after starting this log, because I've fallen into the bad
(and very dull!) habit of listing minutes. I'm not being a very reflective learner, and I'm not sure how much
keeping a log of minutes is helping me to improve in Spanish.
I do know that my Skype conversations are having a HUGE impact on my ability to speak. I'm now using past
tense (both preterite and imperfect) when describing things in the past. I can argue good-naturedly with my
language partners about the effect of technology on communication. I even tell jokes! OK, they're not particularly
funny jokes, but they wouldn't be funny if they were in English either. It's less about the language, and more
about the delivery.
I've been studying Spanish for almost three months now. While I'm nowhere near a fluent speaker, I can carry on
a conversation for a full hour without using any English. I'm feeling really good about my progress.
That said, I know that I need to move on to listening to native materials soon. My tutors and language partners
are all really cognizant of the fact that I'm learning, and while they don't "dumb down" their speech too much,
they definitely enunciate and speak much more clearly and slowly than a typical person would. I need to
challenge my listening comprehension skills a bit!
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