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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| vanillabean Groupie Canada Joined 5016 days ago 53 posts - 63 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 25 of 40 20 April 2011 at 4:37pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks Iguanamon. I agree... I think the speaking has really made a big difference. Hopefully this group will be
really valuable in my learning. Just finished up to Lesson 9 in Pimsleur II last night, practiced some verb conjugation, did my flashcards in Anki, etc... it was a pretty productive evening. The irregular verbs are killing me, haha. I'm sure I'll get them down eventually... Tomorrow's meetup has a 'topic' (sports) so I'll be going over some vocab for that tonight. I'm still struggling with the 'listening' - I've been listening to quite a few Spanish podcasts and my comprehension is up and down... I find if it's too fast I don't catch much of it - I'm still processing what was said and they're on to the next thing. Estoy muy impaciente por aprender español. Pero, yo se... que yo sole he estudiado por aproximadamente cinco semanas. Yo tengo muchas palabras en la cabeza, per cuando estoy escribiendo o hablado yo no me acuerdo de nada! Ahora estoy aprendiendo sobre los diferentes tiempos - presente, preterito, futuro. Es muy dificíl! No se sí mi gramática ha mejorado. Porque ingles es mi primera lengua, es muy dificíl para mi pensar sobre las frases en diferente forma. Por ejemplo, estoy encontrando las frases reflexivas muy dificíles, porque yo no escribo como esta en ingles. Hábitos viejos son dificíles de romper... I'll update after the meetup tomorrow. Edited by vanillabean on 21 April 2011 at 1:57am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| vanillabean Groupie Canada Joined 5016 days ago 53 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 26 of 40 06 May 2011 at 5:01am | IP Logged |
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Ahh, it's been a while since I updated. Things are still moving along, although I feel like I've hit a bit of a slump.
I DO NOT mean that I'm less motivated... it's different than that. I guess I'm not seeing as "much" progress each day as I was at the beginning (which I know is natural). So it's kind of good and frustrating at the same time... it motivates me to learn more and advance further, but it's difficult to feel like I'm progressing "slower" than before. I hate to say it, but I have abandoned Pimsleur for now. I got about halfway through Unit 2 and my Platiquemos arrived. I really wanted to finish Unit 3 of Pimsleur before beginning Platiquemos but it was tempting me so much, and I felt like a change. So we'll see how that goes - so far so good. I found the first few lessons extremely easy but I'm sure it will get harder as I go along, so I'm going to complete them all from the beginning. Trying to keep up with all the other materials - my writings on lenguajero have kind of fallen by the wayside, so I plan on doing a few more of those this week, as I think it really helped because it forces me to look up words I want to use in my writing, but don't know yet. Still stumbling my way through the first Harry Potter book, and my second book arrived so I better finish it off soon :) Keeping up with my Anki vocabulary review, and trying to fit in grammar lessons from my Practice Makes Perfect books whenever I can. *Phew* The Spanish meetup group is going amazingly well! I'm really happy I started it. We are now up to 56 members and a lot of events going on. It's been great even for meeting other people I can practice speaking with. The hard part is getting everyone to speak in Spanish the majority of the time when we have a meetup - when there's a lot of beginners present (and including myself) there's a tendency to fall back to English whenever it gets hard. We also have other events besides conversational meetups - for example we have a Spanish movie planned for this weekend and Salsa dancing next week! Anyway that's all for my updates... I'm off to do some more studying... I'm in the 6 week challenge and so far I'm way behind...17th place!!!! Hopefully this weekend I'll have enough free time to catch up a bit. Edited by vanillabean on 06 May 2011 at 5:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| vanillabean Groupie Canada Joined 5016 days ago 53 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 27 of 40 07 May 2011 at 4:30am | IP Logged |
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Completed up to Unit 3 in Platiquemos. It's insane how much "more" material is covered in each lesson compared to
Pimsleur, or at least it feels like it. I really like the drills... it's kind of repetitive sometimes but at the same time I feel like I really know it when I move on. Finally the weekend! I'll finally have some extra time so hopefully I can make up for lost time this week in the challenge =) We'll see. I want to get into some of the other materials I have - books, movies, etc... I have a whole collection now that I haven't had time to read/watch. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| vanillabean Groupie Canada Joined 5016 days ago 53 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 28 of 40 09 May 2011 at 3:39am | IP Logged |
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Today was very productive. Our meetup group met for the showing of a Spanish film at the library, followed by a
couple hours at the coffee shop speaking about 80% of the time in Spanish. Today there were only two beginners - myself and one other person, so I feel like I learned a lot because everyone else was far above my skill level. I appreciate their patience so much though... the hardest part about practicing my spoken Spanish is how bad I feel for those who have to listen to me, because I speak soooo slowly! Ugh. Someday, I won't have to worry about that. :p This afternoon I finished off Unit 5 of Platiquemos and I'll probably try to do a couple chapters in my grammar book tonight, since it's been on the back burner for a while. Vocabulary is all up to date, as I had lots of time yesterday to work on that. I'll update later on. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| vanillabean Groupie Canada Joined 5016 days ago 53 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 29 of 40 13 May 2011 at 7:16am | IP Logged |
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I didn't study Spanish at ALL last night because I went out for a salsa lesson with our meetup group (we do some
other fun stuff besides conversational meetups as well... haha). It was a nice change from the usual and I had a lot of fun. Tonight I was back at it but feeling a bit frustrated... there were so many times last night I reverted to English even though I could've said it in Spanish if I'd thought about it more... but things just fly out of my head right when I need them. Ugh... hopefully that will come with time. I also have too many grammar books going on. I LOVE the Practice Makes Perfect Series, and they've been really helpful but I need to just focus on one. Instead I have Spanish Vocabulary, Spanish Sentence Builder, Complete Spanish Grammar... haha... it's hard to keep up. :) Completed Unit 6 of Platiquemos today. I'm really enjoying it so far but finding it hard to gauge whether I should be going on to the next lesson. Some parts in the lesson are super easy, others not so much - I think this weekend I'll go over the last 3-4 units just for a refresher. So there's the update, I'm off to bed. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| vanillabean Groupie Canada Joined 5016 days ago 53 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 30 of 40 01 June 2011 at 5:09pm | IP Logged |
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Hola todos.
Oh no… has it really been 2 weeks since I updated?! I have still been studying and keeping up with my Spanish, although things have gotten very busy, and I haven’t had as much time as I would like. A woman from my meetup group is a Spanish tutor and offered me some occasional tutoring sessions so I think this is something I will do… I need to fill in the gaps of what I’m missing through my own study, and even the one on one speaking practice will be a good thing. She is originally from Mexico and has lived in Canada for 15 years. I am still making my way through Platiquemos, although I have had to slow the pace a bit. I also have a potential Skype partner but we have only talked over MSN so hopefully this week sometime we will get time to talk – I’m very nervous since my Spanish is so slow and my grammar is probably terrible… haha :D I’m still reading Harry Potter, but I get frustrated because I am so slow, and it takes me about 45 minutes to get through one chapter! I’m also in the 6 week challenge but it’s funny because I have gotten less studying done during these past few weeks than I did before! Oh well, I guess it’s all in fun anyway. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| vanillabean Groupie Canada Joined 5016 days ago 53 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 31 of 40 06 July 2011 at 11:16pm | IP Logged |
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Hola =) Ahh, I did it again... left for a month without updating. :p I didn't mean to, but things have been extremely busy for me. I've fallen behind my goals in terms of my audio/grammar since the meetup group has been keeping me incredibly busy. However, it's been amazing in other ways - I've met so many great people. Obviously I am faaaaar from fluent, but I've had the opportunity to have simple conversations in Spanish almost every day, just because of who I'm spending time with.
At salsa the other night, I met a friend of a friend who spoke very little English. It was actually pretty cool to see how much Spanish I was able to get out simply because I was forced to. It's interesting. I did have an embarassing moment after making a VERY amateur mistake... my friend asked if I wanted another drink and I responded with "soy buena" instad of "estoy bien". I immediately knew that was wrong but we had a laugh over it. :) Anyway. Other than that, I've been watching lots of Spanish movies, podcasts, etc. in an attempt to improve my listening comprehension (which I think has noticeably improved - I understand a lot more of what I'm hearing now). I just got through the future & conditional tense in my grammar book, so it's just a case of getting more comfortable with it so I can use it in everyday conversations. I'll try to update a bit more often in here over the next few weeks! :) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5383 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 32 of 40 09 July 2011 at 1:24am | IP Logged |
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Nice to see you are keeping up with Spanish, Vanillabean. I think just keeping it going during the busy times is one of the secrets... just don't quit and you will be fine. In fact, you seem to be progressing very fast.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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