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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 17 of 104 13 January 2014 at 3:20am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi James29-
Thanks for you Assimil advice. I will take your suggestion and spend less time on the lesson - making sure I squeeze in time for the passive way. I did try Destinos but it's a little slow but I can definitely try to go back through it. Did you just watch the episodes or do something else? I feel like I heard people mention some lessons that go along with the series? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5533 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 18 of 104 13 January 2014 at 3:47am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know about James, but so far I've done nothing with Destinos but watch the episodes
and I feel like it has been immensely helpful, especially for listening practice trying to keep up with the dialogs. 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 19 of 104 13 January 2014 at 3:52am | IP Logged | ||
I bet this is one of those personal things, but I'll tell you how I approach it. Personally, I have no hope of completely understanding the rules of grammar, given the two languages I study. :-) French has too many exceptions to actually memorize (600+ irregular verbs, falling into 107 patterns), and Egyptologists have spent the last several decades having a huge knock-down fight about how verbs work. Nor am I sufficiently diligent to actually memorize sentences. That sounds too much like work, and I'm actually pretty lazy. Mostly I just play around with stuff and try to notice patterns. For example, I know from my Assimil course that gAb.wt means "leaves", and wAD means green, and ".w" seems to be sort of like "-ed" in English. And then Assimil gives me an example like this: gAb.wt wAD.w (leaves) (green-ed) "The leaves have become green." Now, I also know that km means "black." So I start thinking about other variations: gAb.wt km.w (leaves) (black-ed) "The leaves have become black." Can I do that? Who knows. I imagine I'll find out at some point. And I've already forgotten what this construction is called, so please don't give me a grammar test. I'm just messing around and trying to put stuff together in different ways, in hope that I'll be able to recognize it if I run into it again. Basically, the way I figure it, if I actually need to know something, I'll eventually see it thousands of times. I can speed up the process by paying attention and occasionally puzzling stuff out. And you know, I think I'd been speaking French full-time for a month before I realized that the language actually had two past tenses, and I'd read a small stack of French novels before I could pick the right one automatically most of the time. I don't recommend being quite that lackadaisical, but the point is that if you don't understand something now, it's perfectly OK to ask, "Hey, can I have another 10,000 examples of how that works, please?" At some point, it should be almost second nature. It's sort of like Internet memes—after looking at 200 lolcat images, "I can haz" starts to roll off your tongue whether you want it to or not. And honestly, even if you were to visit Peru and say things like "I go to store yesterday and I buy bread", everybody would be too busy saying, "Wow, you speak Spanish!" to worry about your grammar. I mean, you wouldn't want to talk that way forever, because eventually it stops being cute. But as long as you pay attention and you really try to imitate people, a lot of these problems will sort themselves out sooner or later. So dive right on in, and try out your new verb book. But don't beat yourself up if it takes a while to internalize this stuff. And never hesitate to look back at where you were 150 hours ago! Edited by emk on 13 January 2014 at 3:53am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| AmyinBrooklyn Senior Member United States Joined 4049 days ago 87 posts - 122 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 20 of 104 20 January 2014 at 7:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Week Total: 17 hours and 26 min.
Grand Total: 193 hours 13 min. The thing that I’m most proud of this week is that I finally connected with an italki tutor and had an initial session (where we just chatted about goals) and then a real hour-long session. I’m committing to trying to do that 2 or 3 times per week. I was occasionally meeting one-on-one with the teacher from my group Spanish I class but honestly, the italki is so much cheaper and I really liked how the instructor organized the session. Each session has a theme - since I’m traveling to Peru, we’re starting with airport, tourist stuff and then food. So I learned some airport vocabulary prior to our lesson and then the teacher showed me pictures of people in an airport and I had to try to describe what was happening. It was so much better than just trying to think of random conversation. I also got my Spanish Verb Tenses this week, and I spent a lot of time working through that. I was hoping to finish the first 100 pages - and get all the way through the present tense but that didn’t happen. I spent 7 hours out of my 17 hours working through that book. I think it really helpful in hitting home some points that the audio courses gloss over. I was having a tough time with some of the sections on stem changing verbs (verbs where the middle part changes -like contar to cuento) - my mind was just spinning but I just reminded myself that I wasn’t going to learn it if I didn’t go through it and I didn’t have to know it all at once. I gave The Simpsons a break this week and decided to go back to something easier - Detinos - it is! I watched a few episodes of that. I feel like the show is getting a little more interesting and I can see how it’s an important step to understanding more spoken Spanish. I one thing that I didn’t do very well on this week was Assimil - I’m just having trouble staying motivated. Particularly when it feels like I’m barely understanding any of the grammar rules from the lesson. I think I only made it through 4 Assimil lessons this week. I’m going to try to do better on that next week, and I really want to finish the Present section of Spanish Verb Tenses. Edited by AmyinBrooklyn on 20 January 2014 at 4:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4142 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 21 of 104 20 January 2014 at 11:46am | IP Logged | ||
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destinos was really important for me at the beginning. It let me start my journey towards actually understanding spoken Spanish. My path looked something like this:
Destinos -> Notes in Spanish intermediate -> NiS advanced -> native tv yes, destinos is kind of slow and cheesy. But it really does work! I just watched the show, about 4 episodes per week. Highly recommended! Is the verb book you're using Practice Makes Perfect? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| AmyinBrooklyn Senior Member United States Joined 4049 days ago 87 posts - 122 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 22 of 104 20 January 2014 at 4:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Stelle -
Well, I'm super impressed with how far you've gotten with Spanish in such as (relatively) short time. So if Destinos worked for you....! Thanks for giving me your path to understanding spoken Spanish. And I have to say, now that I'm at Episode 10, Destinos is getting more interesting. And yes, the Verb Book that I'm using is Practice Makes Perfect. I actually think it's pretty amazing for grasping what's happening with Verbs even if I don't understand all of it. I bought the hardcopy edition because I thought it would be easier to go through, but I sort of wish I had purchased the Kindle edition because apparently that one comes with an audio key. Thanks so much for reading! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| nj24 Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4661 days ago 56 posts - 106 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian, French | Message 23 of 104 20 January 2014 at 4:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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The audio answer key for the Practice Makes Perfect books is available free on the website. Follow this
link and click on Spanish. If you are ever looking for more grammar exercises to supplement the Practice Makes Perfect books, you might like to check out Conjuguemos.com. All the best with your Spanish studies! I'm also on Team Lobo and look forward to following your log. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4142 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 24 of 104 20 January 2014 at 10:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm also using Practice Makes Perfect - or at least I was. I haven't picked it up in a few months. It's time to get back
into it! I like it a lot. It's clearly written and very affordable. I was going to post the link to the online audio answer key, but nj24 beat me to it. :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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