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Amy’s Spanish Viaje | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| AmyinBrooklyn Senior Member United States Joined 4052 days ago 87 posts - 122 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 9 of 104 02 January 2014 at 7:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Last week (December 23 - December 29) was a tough week for my Spanish language study. I flew to California and back for the holidays and tried to celebrate Christmas. I only managed to squeeze in 13.5 hours of Spanish study and a lot of it was Duolingo - which I'm not sure how productive that actually is for me.
I'm also working my way through Assimil as the primary method of study. I'm having a tough time with some of the different verb tenses - I'm not sure if I should memorize some verb charts or just trust that it will come. I think the trouble is that I feel like I'm dealing with imperfect and past tense verbs at the same time and I don't have a handle on the past tense. I keep trying but it's not making sense to me. In a way, I feel like I'm just rote memorizing the lines for that particular lesson without understanding the rationale. I'm plugging away with Reina del Sur - captivating story! I read the English, read the Spanish - and then listen to the audio, and write down any words that I don't understand. I'm moving faster than I did initially and not stressing if I don't 100% understand everything. I'm hoping that next week - the beginning of the New Year gets a little better. 2014 will be my Spanish year! As usual, thanks for all the encouragement here! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 104 02 January 2014 at 9:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Wow, it sounds like things are going great! Maybe it doesn't always seem that way from your perspective, but it sounds like you're on the right track.
Personally, I prefer to memorize verb charts in very small doses: I pick one tense and one conjugation (which narrows it down to 6 endings). I then memorize those six endings and keep my eyes open for them when I reading. And I rarely memorize irregular verbs, because either (a) they're so common that I'll learn them through osmosis, or (b) they're rare enough that I don't care early on. Iversen has a very clever solution: He takes one sheet of paper (he likes green) and he just writes out the regular endings in little tables, then he hangs it up somewhere that he can see it easily when reading.
Not every lesson is a winner. :-/ Sometimes it will just click, and other times, the easiest way is to keep reading and to keep looking at the patterns. Right now, for example, I fundamentally do not get Egyptian verbs. And on some level, I'll doubt that I'll be able to explain how they work. But I have great faith that if I look at enough examples, often enough, I'll somehow internalize the basics through sheer familiarity.
Excellent. I think you'll be amazed at how much difference the first few hundred pages of reading will make. :-) Good luck with your year of Spanish! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| AmyinBrooklyn Senior Member United States Joined 4052 days ago 87 posts - 122 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 104 03 January 2014 at 4:40am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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@emk - I can always count on you for the encouragement! I like the idea of trying to memorize some small doses of frequently seen verb charts. I think it might be time to attempt some memorization. Thank you!
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| AmyinBrooklyn Senior Member United States Joined 4052 days ago 87 posts - 122 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 12 of 104 06 January 2014 at 4:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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January 2014 Goals
I wrote some of these down on the TAC Team thread (LOBO), but I’ve been thinking about them more over the past couple of weeks, and I’ve refined them a bit here. 1. 14 hours per week Spanish Study until March, after which, I might drop to 10 (I'm currently at about 15-18 hours per week but I’m super motivated for this trip to Peru that I’m taking at the end of March. I’m not sure if I can keep up with my rigorous schedule all year - but you never know.) 2. Finish Assimil Spanish with Ease 3. Start FSI 4. Read three books in Spanish (I'm reading La Reina del Sur and at first, I committed to just reading one book, but I think that I can do more!) 5. Watch 30 hours of Spanish TV/movies with Spanish subtitles 6. Commit to one italki session with a tutor per week until March 7. Be easier on myself - I’m sure this is one that I won’t be able to keep up with. I don’t know why it’s hard for me to be patient with myself. But I’ve found that counting hours helps. So far I only have about 159 hours of Spanish, and I keep beating myself up for not knowing more. Then I realized this morning that if I keep up with my schedule, I’ll be logging at least an additional 170 hours before Peru. WOW! That made me feel so much better. When I think about how far I’ve come in this 150 hours - and knowing that I’ll be able to do that much before Peru just makes me feel more confident. This current week: I flew home from California this week so it was a little difficult to get back on my schedule but I think I’m there now. I still managed my 2 hours per day even while gone, but I just don’t think they were up to the same quality as my time at home (too much Duolingo for example) Assimil is getting more and more difficult (I know that I’m beginning to sound like a broken record). On Saturday, I spent one hour and twenty minutes just going through lesson 25. It’s become so difficult that I’m only able to do five or so sentences at a time so I have to break up the lesson, and I just keep redoing it and redoing it until I get it perfectly. I put any new words into Anki. I’m on Lesson 68 with the passive part. Because I’m spending so much time on the active, I’ve only been spending 20 or so minutes on the passive. I just don’t have the stomach for much more, but I do try to note new words and put them into Anki (hopefully, that will help when I get to the active). It’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel with Assimil but I’m trusting all of you here! I try to go through my Anki flashcards every day (sometimes, I do skip a day though). It’s much easier if I stay on top of it so that is my goal for next week. My Anki deck is basically words from La Reina del Sur, and Assimil and I’ve also started going through my frequency dictionary and adding the words that I don’t know into Anki. Since Assimil is taking most of my day, I just break up the rest of my study by either reading/listening, doing my Basic Spanish workbook (which is easy but a good refresher), I've spent a bit of time relistening to Language Transfer. Just really trying to get the grammar concepts to stick in my brain. On to next week! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 13 of 104 12 January 2014 at 3:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Great goals. At first I thought they were goals for 2014, but now I see they are just for January! It seems like you are really enjoying the process and progressing quite well.
I remember those lessons in the early 20s of Assimil and reading your post made me think of my experience when I was there. I think it was lesson 23 for me. I simply could NOT do it no matter how much time I spent on it. I eventually gave up and just moved on to the next lesson. Getting ready for a trip is a cool thing. It makes it all worth it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 104 12 January 2014 at 9:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Ah, nice. It looks like you're on track. According to various language schools, it typically takes ~150 study hours to reach A2 in a Romance language, and ~300 study hours to reach B1. And I've always thought that B1 is when immersion gets really fun, as you can see from this CEFRL checklist:
Sure, I totally sounded like an enthusiastic toddler at that level, and I relied on crazy circumlocutions, but given time and persistence, I could actually communicate most things. And there was this two-week period where I thought my brain would melt from speaking, after which things got easier. In other words, if you're like most of us, you certainly won't "master" Spanish before your trip, but should know enough to socialize and to have tons of fun. This is the time where everybody is all, "Wow! You speak Spanish!" Enjoy every minute of it.
This would be an excellent time to practice letting your standards slip, then. :-) There's supposedly a series of rather nasty passive-wave lessons starting somewhere near your current location. I've watched a couple of people go nuts trying to get perfect on them. So if you suddenly see a spike in difficulty, use it to practice other important skills: Deciding what to learn, and what to let go, and telling yourself, "Perfection is not required. My goal is to establish communication, not to stress over every little detail." For example, having done Assimil before, I'm totally confident blowing off Assimil Egyptian lesson 33, because I know that I can live without knowing the words for Egyptian makeup right now. (Seriously, Assimil? What on earth?) It's totally OK to decide what you want to get from a lesson, and to let the rest go. Edited by emk on 12 January 2014 at 9:29pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| AmyinBrooklyn Senior Member United States Joined 4052 days ago 87 posts - 122 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 15 of 104 12 January 2014 at 11:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks for your encouragement @James29 - I'm on this Assimil journey because of you! I get so much inspiration from reading your log and see hard you worked on everything and how well you are doing now! (Oh but my goals are not just for January! I think it was confusing the way that I wrote it but I don't think I can read three books this month! I guess they are sort of for now until April. I have a habit IRL of setting three month goals for myself. So maybe I sort of did that here.
@emk- Thanks for your uplifting comments as usual. Can't tell you how much it means! I can not wait until I'm at a B1 - I just signed up and did my first italki session today so maybe B1 will come soon! Oh, but I do have a question for you (and for James29) as Assimil veterans. Do you think it's a problem that I'm rote memorizing a lot of the Assimil stuff and not completely understanding the grammar - I'm trying to fix my grammar gaps but I feel like all these tenses are being thrown at me at once... Week: 16 hours 17 min. Total: 175 hours 47 min. I think that both the plus and the minus of learning a language yourself rather than via a class is that you really have to stay on top of what you need. If, for example, you have trouble with an aspect of grammar (as I was with past tense this week). You really need to figure out how you are going to solve your problems. I ended up buying Past-Tense Verbs Up Close (a workbook) and am going to make my way through those exercises and see if that helps. It should be in my hands tomorrow. Can't wait to tackle past tense and finally get it down. It is amazing how easily I can fill my 2 hours per day. I have so much material that I need to get through that it’s not really difficult at all to fill the time. Since Assimil is taking up so much of my time, I'm trying to spend the rest of the time on just a bit of grammar, and on reading/listening to Spanish AND I was just realizing that I’m a full month through the Active Wave of Assimil (I’m not keeping up as much with the Passive Wave - I seem to have let myself lapse to only 30 lessons ahead of the Active - I’m not sure if this is going to hurt me later but it’s just so difficult to try to fit everything in - there are only so many hours in the day!) My goal for the next week is to try to keep up with the Passive wave. I made contact with an italki teacher today. I only booked a 30 min. session and the I had trouble connecting on Skype, but we practiced a bit and developed a solid plan for moving forward that I think will help me. I’m going to see if I can manage three times a week with her until my trip at the end of March. I think the primary thing is to get my confidence up. I think I actually know more than I give myself credit for. Oh and I also started watching the Simpsons. I would say that I really don’t understand much of it. I get the basic gist and then I’m mostly just trying to pick out words that I know. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 16 of 104 13 January 2014 at 12:50am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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In retrospect I think I spent too much time and effort on each Assimil lesson. I really studied each lesson very hard. I would have been better off just spending 20-30 minutes on each one and going through the book an extra time. I would not say I memorized each lesson, but I shadowed them so many times that I was able to repeat them and shadow them simply due to memory (I'm not sure if I am making sense). I think Assimil is wonderful, but I think after 30 minutes a day it loses its value.
I'd definitely keep up with the passive wave. If you feel you are struggling just move on with the idea that you will spend more time on the lesson some other time. If you don't get it all that is totally fine. I highly recommend doing a second active wave. That is when things really started to click for me in Spanish. You will be MUCH better off going through Assimil 3-4 times at 20-30 minutes a lesson than you will be going through it twice at 60 minutes a lesson. Sorry if I sound like I am beating a dead horse. I cannot really give you advice on how to spend the rest of your study time because I never really studied more than 60 minutes a day. If the Simpsons are too tough you might watch the Destinos episodes. Not as interesting, but much easier to understand. I forget if you have already watched them or not. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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