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Amy’s Spanish Viaje | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| AmyinBrooklyn Senior Member United States Joined 4049 days ago 87 posts - 122 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 73 of 104 31 August 2014 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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@emk Thanks for stopping by and commenting. I love when you visit! You always have such great advice. I keep trying to remind myself poco a poco!
@James29 I haven't yet gotten to the difficult part of FSI. I've only just finished lesson 16 and so far I haven't come across any new concepts and only very few new words. I'm sure that once I get further along, it will become more challenging. And if you've given me permission to never do Assimil - then I just might take you up on that. I need to remind myself that my goal isn't necessarily to simply complete programs, I actually have a goal of speaking Spanish! And you have been such a great example to me of how that can be done! OK, so this week! Here are the numbers: Week Total: 13 hours 16 min. Grand Total: 539 hours 9 min. Basically my week break up looks like this: 2 hours italki tutor 5 hour 29 min watching telenovelas (note: I only allow myself to count 2 telenovela episodes toward my total per day, even if some days, I end up watching more) 3 hours 24 min FSI 26 min. Anki 48 min. reading 9 min. playing on veintemundos.com I'm plugging away on my two main methods - telenovela plus FSI. I also had two italki sessions this week and checked out El Principe de la Niebla based on the recommendations on Stelle’s log. I’d like to see more progress in my vocabulary, but I just don’t feel like I have a great method. When I’m on it, I put my words into Anki and then try to go through them. This week I was pretty good about it and went through my Anki deck three times - for me, that’s a good week. I’d like to try to commit to doing Anki everyday next week and putting 10 new words in a week. I feel like I make these promises and then break them, but let’s see if I can do it. Today, I did a better job at trying to go more slowly with the new words - looking up images in google images and seeing if I could get them to stick rather than just trying to rote remember them. I’m not too hard on myself with the Anki because I figure that doing FSI everyday, italki and so much TV watching will also pay off. But let’s see if I can stick to my Anki plan how I’ll feel at the end of next week. Edited by AmyinBrooklyn on 01 September 2014 at 7:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| AmyinBrooklyn Senior Member United States Joined 4049 days ago 87 posts - 122 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 74 of 104 31 August 2014 at 8:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Oh! And I wanted to add that I did try to listen to nomadas but I just cannot comprehend much of it. If I really really focus, I can understand a bit, but for some reason I have the worst time understanding this show and I'm not really sure what my hold up is. But I wanted to note it so that when I go back in a month or so or in two months, I can see if I'm making progress.
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| AmyinBrooklyn Senior Member United States Joined 4049 days ago 87 posts - 122 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 75 of 104 07 September 2014 at 6:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Let’s see. I pretty much stuck to my telenovela + FSI plan - although, I gave myself a few days off with FSI. Work has been a little crazy. I’m teaching a university course for the first time this fall so I had to direct some brain power that direction. I did have two conversations with my boyfriend this week (only twenty minutes each), but he was surprised at how much I had improved since the last time we spoke. He was impressed that I am able to communicate now (I should hope so with all the time I put in!). I also worked with Anki every day this week. I had declared that to be my goal last week and just writing it in here made me stick to it. I kept reminding myself that I wanted to be able to come back and update my log that I actually had worked with Anki without missing a day. I didn’t add new words every day, but I did add a total of 40 new words this week. I finished Que Pobres Tan Ricos (120 hours of watching!), and I’ve started with a new one - Mi Corazon es Tuyo. I really like the light, funny telenovelas. And it’s the only way I can justify my TV watching. Now I feel guilty when I watch anything in English. I’m also really enjoy it because it’s something that I can do with my boyfriend and we have a fun time watching and laughing and I can ask questions about words, if I don’t understand.
My goals for next week: Continue with FSI (I’d like to finish lesson 18 and start lesson 19) and review Anki every day and add 50 new words. I’m sure I’ll also read a bit, practice speaking and watch my telenovela but we’ll just see how that goes. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 76 of 104 07 September 2014 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | ||
This is one of the fun bits of learning a partner's language: Instead of hogging the TV all by yourself, you can watch together, ask questions and talk about the series. And as you mention, watching tons of silly TV is suddenly virtuous. :-) One of my favorite arguments is that the "true" start of language learning is when you can have fun watching TV. Everything up to that point is just some stuff you have to get out of the way first. And you've done it. Congratulations on your amazing progress! 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5373 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 77 of 104 14 September 2014 at 2:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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That's quite an accomplishment... to finish Que Pobres Tan Ricos. That is a lot of TV time in Spanish. One problem I have with Telenovelas is that it seems intimidating to start on something like that that has 166 episodes when I really don't have any idea if I'll enjoy it or not. I wish there was a way to know ahead of time if a Telenovela is going to really hold your interest.
Also, I'm curious... why don't you speak more in Spanish with your boyfriend? It seems like you are at a level where you could have Spanish be your default language with him. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| AmyinBrooklyn Senior Member United States Joined 4049 days ago 87 posts - 122 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 78 of 104 15 September 2014 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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@emk - Watching the show together was so fun. It makes me so happy that I've made the effort to learn his language and it's so nice to have something to do that doesn't feel like studying!
@James29 - I feel like I finally found a type of telenovela that works for me. I tried a few others, but I just don't like the big, overly dramatic shows. The fun thing about Que Pobres (and now I'm watching Mi Corazon es Tuyo) is that they are like sitcoms - light, funny and really current. But basically, I'm ok with watching the first episode of the show and then moving on if I don't like it. I subscribe to Hulu (it's $8 a month) instead of cable and they have so many Spanish show options. I totally recommend it signing up for it! Anyway, as far as talking full time to my boyfriend.... Honestly, I feel like I'm just now at the point where I could give it a try. But it's really hard to switch your primary language in a relationship. I know emk has done it, so maybe he can give me advice. If I say something in Spanish, I often just get a "what?" which at first crushed me, but now I think it's just because he's not expecting Spanish to come out of my mouth! But I've made some good strides in the last few months - I think watching 125 hours of TV really helped! And FSI is helping A LOT. Honestly, I really had to get over myself. That's when one of the biggest challenges - at first, I was shy to say playa in front of him! But now, just the fact that I can say, let's talk in Spanish for a while and we can really helps. I think I'm moving slowly to the place where we'll talk more. (And I speak REALLY slowly as my brain is working so hard!) I'm just slow in getting the confidence to go there. I know it seems crazy and that I should just jump in and speak Spanish all the time, but sometimes, I just want to communicate and I'm only just getting to the point where that feels possible in Spanish. Weekly Log: I did so great with Anki last week but this week was a bit of a bust. I don’t know if setting two big goals of trying to basically do FSI everyday + 40 new words was just too much or what happened, but it was a bust. I did go through my Anki deck every day but Sunday, but I only added 10 new words. Next week, I’m going to aim for 30 and I’m not going to put too much FSI pressure on myself and see how that goes. I did have a full 40 min. Skype conversation with my boyfriend’s mom almost entirely in Spanish. I definitely speak very very slowly as I conjugate in my head - I speak like a toy whose battery is running down - but she’s actually pretty patient with me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 79 of 104 16 September 2014 at 1:27pm | IP Logged | ||
OK, let's take this answer piece by piece. It's a complicated question, and I don't have any kind of simple answer. Also, this is based on my personal experience, and some of it may not apply to you—I've never really compared notes with other people who gone through the same process, so I can't disentangle general advice from stuff that only applies to me. Be warned! :-) Convincing your brains to default to Spanish. There's a little switch inside each of your brains that says "I talk to my boyfriend in English" and "I talk to my girlfriend in English." When you meet somebody new, this switch gets set quickly, and then it sticks, hard. Fortunately, this switch can be reset. But it doesn't happen quickly—if you two want to speak Spanish to each other, you'll be consciously overriding your brains for several weeks, at least. But it can be done. Speaking slowly, melting brains & burn in. Your brain will melt from the effort. For me, things got noticeably easier after the first two weeks, and much easier after the first six weeks or so. Writing exercises. An excellent exercise—and one I should do more, even today—is to keep a journal on lang-8, and to try to write about whichever conversational subject gave me the most trouble during the day (or the day before). Keep it to no more than 100 words, and be sure to make friends with good correctors by correcting their stuff. (You could also try writing on iTalki instead.) Why writing? This gives you the time to look up the stuff you needed during the day, and to have somebody point out where your grammar is weird. You won't be as clever or interesting in Spanish, and this probably won't go away soon. At first, you'll feel like a 3-year-old. You'll get over this. (And besides, you'll get lots of compliments from everybody.) If you plug away at it for a while, you'll be able to deal with pretty much anything life throws at you, even if you're a bit clunky. But then you may run into a trickier version of this problem: You can talk about anything you need to talk about, and sometimes even do it with some humor and a bit of style, at least among strangers. But with people you see every day, well, they'll get tired of the stories and conversational tricks you use with strangers. And that will bring you right down to a hard reality: You won't be amazing at Spanish the way you're amazing at English, not any time soon at least. The size of your "speech community." As far as I can tell, a couple—or even a nuclear family—just isn't enough in the long run. It's not enough for heritage learners to master their parents' language. Basically, if you mostly speak Spanish with the same two or three people, you'll get very good at certain subjects. But they'll also get good at understanding you. As far as I can tell, if you want to be amazing at Spanish the way your are at English, you'll eventually need to spend time with a much broader group of peers. One possible strategy. Only you and your boyfriend can decide whether or not you want to speak mostly Spanish in the long run. If you do, it may come with real tradeoffs and consequences. But in the short run, you could do something special: Set aside a month, perhaps, and say "During this month we'll try to speak Spanish as much as possible." Make big deal of it: Give your boyfriend an awesome present for putting up with it. Flip that little mental switch in your heads. Get through those first two weeks of brain melt, and start getting better. Write a little bit every day to help fill in the holes. Etc. Do it for the relationship. It's easy to get stubborn about speaking your L2. And in the short term, that can be a good thing. But once you get through the first month or so, you'll have gained most of what you can gain easily: You'll speak Spanish together a lot more easily, you'll be able to participate in the Spanish-speaking parts of his life, and you'll be able to say sweet things to him in his native tongue. But you still won't be as awesome in Spanish as you are in English—and you won't fix that by stubbornly insisting on using Spanish all the time, not with just one person. So anyway, that's my long, contradictory advice, based on a sample-size of 1. Part of what I've just said is surely only applicable to me and nobody else—but I don't know which part. So take it all with a grain of salt, have fun with it, and don't let yourself be so stubborn that you lose sight of why you're doing all this in the first place. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| AmyinBrooklyn Senior Member United States Joined 4049 days ago 87 posts - 122 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 80 of 104 30 December 2014 at 6:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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I’ve been absent from my log for quite a few months as life has thrown me some rather larger curve balls. Namely, I lost my job in October, which led to me moving from the East Coast to California to be near closer to my family. It was a move that I wanted to make for some time, but as you might imagine, the stress has been pretty intense. (Moving across the country is no joke). As I result of the stress, I broke out in hive and threw out my back - fun times! But I’m settling in, here in California, and am hunting for new jobs.
So during that time, I neglected my log here, but I did keep up with my Spanish study. In fact, studying Spanish proved to be very relaxing in the midst of so much upheaval. I think that because it requires so much concentration, my mind can't wander to other things... Anyway, lately my routine has consisted of working through FSI (I’m on lesson 29 - I repeat each lesson four times and then move on - even if I'm not perfect on every aspect) and watching telenovelas. When things got really stressful, I just watched the telenovelas. So far, I’ve watched three 160 episode-long telenovelas (that’s 360 hours of telenovela watching!) In total, to date, I’ve logged 731 hours of Spanish study (that is not including all the TV watching because I only allow myself to “count two episodes per day - just some weird mental thing I have about not feeling like TV is "real study") I also have an Anki flashcard deck that I try to go through once a day. I’ve also been working in more frequent Spanish conversations with my boyfriend. But so far, that isn’t the focus as I’ve been under so much personal stress. So that's where my Spanish study is! I'm very proud of the fact that I've done something in Spanish every day for fourteen months. I've come to enjoy the process of studying and learning so much. I don't have any huge goals for 2015 - honestly, I'm still under too much stress for goal making. But I hope to continue working on my Spanish everyday, and hopefully hit 1000 hours of Spanish study. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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