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An experiment: 100 days of _Cien años_ | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| ElComadreja Senior Member Philippines bibletranslatio Joined 7239 days ago 683 posts - 757 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Cebuano, French, Tagalog | Message 9 of 55 30 July 2013 at 6:11pm | IP Logged |
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I had a Spanish tutor who worked a bit with me on that book, by her recommendation. I read Spanish all the time with just a few problems, but this one I never pushed enough to read it. I'm interested to see your progress.
I'm trying things the other direction at the moment, word lists first, reading later. In about a month I'll see how that turns out for me. The hard thing is when you're getting much over that 85%, it could be a long time before you see a word in 6 contexts. Maybe someday I'll try Don Quixote again. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4766 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 10 of 55 30 July 2013 at 11:32pm | IP Logged |
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Wow, do you have a good point!
After reading the posts here, I decided that I should be able to make up and anki list of vocabulary in Cien using openoffice calc and some online text tools. It worked like a charm. Cien has a little over 15000 unique words; this includes proper names, different forms of verbs and the like. Let's say I use "L-R like" techniques and get so I can read through the entire book, understanding each of the words in the context where they appear. How many of the words will I learn; how many of the words will appear more than either 6 or 20 times? The answer shocked me. Only about 650 words appear more than 20 times, and only about 2350 appear more than 6 times. Most of these words, of course, are words I already know. If I need to see the word 6 to 20 times for it to stick and more into active vocabulary, it looks to me like I have about 6 to 20 books like this to read to get up to the 9000 words it takes to be at the 98% level for typical books for adults. This assumes, of course that I wouldn't forget the word completely during the time it takes to see it in the next book. I'm actually reading a 13 hour long book over 100 hours, which will involve a lot of repetition; perhaps that will replace some of the need to 6-20 contexts. I'm glad I made the anki deck. I sorted it by reverse frequency and by location in the text. This means that the words are infrequent words that appear early in the text. This method does a pretty good job of picking out words that I don't know from the text, and so far it doesn't appear to all be exotic flora and fauna. Since they are infrequent, learning them with anki won't help me much later in the book, but it will mean that I'm spending my time studying words I don't know. So, for learning a lot of vocabulary through extensive reading, I think you need to read A LOT OF BOOKS! The idea of reading a lot of books makes me happy. If I can improve my comprehension enough so I can get through books faster, this could be really fun. :) Edited by sfuqua on 30 July 2013 at 11:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4766 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 55 31 July 2013 at 6:24am | IP Logged |
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Day 2 92%
This means nothing; it is just noise. One day means nothing. I must have gotten my data from an easy page. Perhaps there will be too much noise to see any pattern over the 100 days. I spent about an hour listening to Spanish and reading English, about 20 minutes of it three times. I then read through two pages of the book, aloud, three times, checking the parallel English translation when needed for a word (only the first time through). I have made a pdf parallel Spanish/English translation of the book, which makes the reading aloud easier. One time through reading aloud checking the English translation, and then another time through to work out the tongue twisters, and review it the next day is the way I'm going to go now. I also made an anki deck of vocabulary word from the book. I'm going to add this; since anki can fit into random times of the day. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4766 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 12 of 55 05 August 2013 at 6:31am | IP Logged |
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OK, here's where we're at...
Day 1 85% Day 2 92% Day 3 84% Day 5 87% Day 6 89% Day 7 91% Maybe there is a trend there, but it still could all be noise. I am definitely learning vocabulary; I have many, many words that are in the "half learned" category. I'm sort of surprised how many "turns of phrase" Gabo has. My impression is that there is a "skeleton" of not too difficult Spanish that Gabo uses and a lot of low frequency vocabulary. The skeleton will be easy to master; the low frequency vocabulary, well we'll see. I have shifted techniques a few times, figuring out how I want to spend the next three months. Here are some things I've done: I dropped my "bilingual parallel" version of the book. That used a google translate version of the book. The google translation sucked too much. I was eager to move ahead, so I decided to just take my English translation of the book, and read it while listening to my Spanish audiobook version. It was a little frustrating; if I got lost for a minute, I would waste time figuring out where I was. I dropped the slow, word by word, Assimil like comparison of the bilingual parallel version; it was too slow, and was taking time out from just blasting through the book. I read the L-R document that aYa has on line and realized that I could actually get pretty close to the "true" L-R with the material I already have. I know that I am not actually doing "true L-R", so if I don't get good results, I haven't really given it a good try. She suggests that one work through both the L2 book and the L1 book, covering each paragraph or page like this: 1)listen L2, read L1 2)listen L2, read L2 3)listen L2, read L1 if I understand correctly. So, you are listening to each paragraph/page 3 times. By the last read through, I would guess I'm at about 95% comprehension of the audio. I restarted the book like this, and I'm really enjoying the book. Whether I got the instructions right or not, this seems to work for me. This only means that I'm getting 15 to 20 minutes further in the book each day, but this will work. I read the Bible, Narnia, Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings Trilogy to my son as he fell asleep each night at no more than 15 or so minutes a night. We had no problem keeping up with the story, and a little at a time does add up. Whether this slow approach will prevent vocabulary from sticking... we'll see. aYa says that she thinks that 2 hours a day is about the minimum for doing L-R; I would love to do 2 hours a day, but I just don't have the time. I'm going to experiment with trying to do some L-R during lunch hour. Maybe I can get up to 90 minutes a day. I scrambled the words in my anki list, keeping to the "1 instance" words first in the list was a dumb idea. My current plans are to keep closer to "pure L-R" than I first thought I would. 1) Go through the book the way I've been doing it recently listen L2 3X a page/paragraph, read L1, read L2, read L1. 2) Go through the book, maybe two or three times, listen L2 read L1 3) shadow the book. I may change my mind; I may not finish this in 93 more days. Some good developments: 1)I listen to the radio most of the time when I'm in the car alone. I don't understand all of it; I assumed this is because of my lack of vocabulary. The people on the radio are speaking more slowly and clearly lately. I noticed a similar effect when I first started working with FSI, but this is more dramatic. I think that listening to a full speed Spanish audiolibro has kicked my listening comprehension into a higher gear after only a few hours. I'm surprised. I haven't listened to a telenovela yet, maybe I can finally get to the point where I can just enjoy them. 2) I enjoy this process. I really don't care if I learn anything or not. I enjoy reading Spanish books this way. I can't believe that I'm not learning, but if this is fun, it isn't a big deal how fast I'm learning. I'm enjoying my time in Macondo. There is a huge world of Spanish language books. I hope that this somewhat more organized and disciplined approach will help me break into it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4766 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 13 of 55 09 August 2013 at 5:05am | IP Logged |
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News from Macondo:
Day 1 85% Day 2 92% (I don't know what happened here, but it messes up a nice curve) Day 3 84% Day 5 87% Day 6 89% Day 7 91% Day 8 92% Day 9 88.5% (more noise?) Day 10 92.5% Day 11 91.2% Well, I shifted gears completely and went back to the old ways in reading a book that's too hard... Read a sentence. Figure out what each word means that you don't know. Read the sentence aloud. Work to the end of the page and then go back two pages and read the whole two pages out loud again. Thus I am reading each sentence three times, once one sentence at a time, and twice as part of reading the pages aloud. This low tech approach has many advantages. I can carry my book around and get in a few lines of reading whenever I have a few minutes. I don't have to depend on technology. I don't have to wait until my "dedicated Spanish hour". This seems harder than L-R, while I'm doing it, but is seems like my reading is picking up faster. 10 days and 43 pages into the book, I am definitely learning a bunch of vocabulary, even if half of it may not be sticking. I *never* got into the 90 percents with any novel before this log. I was always skipping around. I seem to be learning Gabo's idiolect. The challenge may not be as difficult as I described in earlier posts. Many of the words that my primitive word counting software finds as "unique" are just different forms of the same word. If you know the singular form a noun, you should know the plural with no problem. You should be able to figure out other forms of verbs if you have seen a few of the forms. I tried reading a page out of a couple of other books that I had tried before, and boy, did they seem easy! I picked _Cien_ because I thought it would be interesting to read, and because I thought it would be hard enough to kick my reading up to the next level. So far it looks like a good choice. At my current rate, I'm not going to be finished with the book after 100 days, but I'll be pretty close. If I don't finish, I'll keep the log going until I finish the book. Every time I pick up the book, it seems a little easier to read, so I hope that, with rapid improvement, I will pick up speed as I go along. It would be so cool if I could get up into 95%-98% and start to be able to just understand things. I may have some trouble getting in my time the next few days; my family is moving apartments. I hate moving. If you're wondering where I am in the book, Ursula has just returned from a her search for her son, and she has discovered an easy path from Macondo to the outside world. We've had more sex than violence so far. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4766 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 14 of 55 09 August 2013 at 5:23am | IP Logged |
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I like L-R, but I think it probably works best when you have longer to do it than I do.
I am really enjoying the book. It is a really good motivator to have something you want to read. The research I have read seems to say that rereading really helps comprehension and helps vocabulary stick, but I want to see what happens next... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4766 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 15 of 55 12 August 2013 at 5:33am | IP Logged |
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A quick update from Macondo...
I'm typing on my phone. Day 12. 94% Day 13 worked 12 hours, heavy manual labor 60 year old body and mind rebelled, no Spanish... Day 14 95% worst day yet, exhausted from another day of moving, the Spanish didn' want to make sense. I think I'll do better when I'm rested. The curve on the vocabulary is very encouraging... Edited by sfuqua on 12 August 2013 at 5:37am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4145 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 16 of 55 12 August 2013 at 12:33pm | IP Logged |
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This is really interesting! I'm not familiar with either Assimil or L-R, but I'm very
intrigued by your approach to reading this book. I read a few chapters of a children's novel every day, but I read extensively rather than intensively. While I'm not sure that I could commit to reading an entire novel intensively, I do think that it would be worthwhile doing something similar with articles. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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