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An experiment: 100 days of _Cien años_ | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4766 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes  Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 25 of 55 19 August 2013 at 1:49am | IP Logged | ||
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I agree completely about RTS software. They all have their weaknesses.
Ivona messes up the intonation on reported speech, for instance. A great actor is much better. I bet that *Love in a time of cholera* is a lot closer to being a normal novel. I think that the critics of Gabo may have made the mistake that judges sometimes do at figure skating competitions they declared Cien to be his great masterpiece and then he won the Nobel prize for it, and then after all the superlatives, he wrote something very different and maybe even better with Armor. He sort of was in competition with himself. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kronos Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5262 days ago 186 posts - 452 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 26 of 55 19 August 2013 at 2:42am | IP Logged | ||
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I have a copy of Cien años de soledad, but my Spanish is not on a level yet where it would make sense to tackle that book (or any novel for that matter). There are other options.
I read some articles and watched documentaries and TV reports on the Colombian drug cartels and the life of Pablo Escobar, an unsavory pastime which after a short while made me feel sick. I was prompted to ask myself if I better spend my time on more positive things. Then I suddenly recalled that one of Gabo's later books deals with this unholy chapter of Colombian (and human) history. The title is Noticia de un secuestro, and I think it is his only non-fiction book. In it he gives an account of a kidnapping by the Medellín drug cartel, but, I guess, at the same time makes use of this event as a fitting background for portraying the ills of Colombian society and politics at that time. I found a copy, incidentally the Colombian edition with the nice chess motive on the cover. Looks great. So I might opt for this one as my first Spanish book, when the time is due. Better than watching gory flicks on youtube, but it's the same topic. I really enjoyed your review of Cien años. Now I've got an approximate idea what it is like. Edited by Kronos on 19 August 2013 at 3:09am 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 27 of 55 19 August 2013 at 4:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Here's what's happened to me in Macondo so far:
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% Day 12 94% Day 13 worked 12 hours, heavy manual labor 60 year old body and mind rebelled, no Spanish... 0% Day 14 95% worst day yet, exhausted from another day of moving, the Spanish didn' want to make sense. Day 15 (back to L-R) 95% Day 16 95% Day 17 96% Day 18 95% Day 19 94% Day 20 91% Day 21 95% I spent about 70 minutes in Macondo today. There was death, and love, and other strange happenings. I'm glad I didn't catch a glimpse of Remedios, la bella; I wouldn't want to go through the rest of my life unhappy, haunted by a supernatural beauty I would never possess. I'm about halfway through the book. I'm a little short of 25% of the way through my 100 days. Now that I've figured out how to do it, and where L-R can fit into my lifestyle, I imagine that I will "finish" it in another week. My commprehension level on the Spanish vocal track fades in and out some. There certainly are words which are a mumble still. I wonder if it might be good to read the Spanish text while listening to the Spanish audio during the second trip through to clear up what some of these words are. I hope I haven't forgotten so much of the first part of the book that I can't make sense of it at all when I try to reread it. It doesn't seem that that is the case, so far. aYa suggested a process like this: 1)Read L1 2)Listen L2, Read L2 3)Listen L2, Read L1 X3 4)Shadow L2 5)Translate some of it from L1 to L2. She also mentions a "reciting" step which can be done "at any time", like this 1) Read the first few words of a sentence, look away from the page and repeat them. 2) Read a few more words of the sentence, overlapping with the first set of words, look away from the page, and so on. aYa never mentions reading aloud that I have seen, but it always seemed to me that this should fit somewhere into the sequence. If I continue at my same pace, I will finish a trip through the book and have time to run through it four more times. As I finish my first trip through the book, I need to decide what step of L-R I will do next. I tentatively think I may just repeat my Listen L2, Read L1 step 2 more times, and then do a Listen L2, Read L2 step to get the shape of the words into my head and finish up with a shadowing step. The shadowing step will fall beyond the end of the 100 days, but I suspect that will be the seal that gets the last morsels of the book into the head. I'll repeat this process with a few more books, if I'm not at the 98% comprehension level. The process is pretty painless so far, and should continue to be so as long as I pick good books. :) 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 28 of 55 19 August 2013 at 5:19am | IP Logged | ||
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I sometimes think that, at least for me, the process of learning Spanish isn't so much finding a way that works best, but rather a process of finding a way that is fun, and works at least a little bit.
It's strange how L-R is viewed as a magic shortcut by some people. aYa recommends that a learner start out with a 50 hour book, and then read/listen through it at least 6 times, which means about 300 hours. Hmmn, FSI Spanish is 55 lessons at at least 7 hours each, the way we usually do it here at HTLAL, which is 385 hours by my arithmetic. It's not that different in terms of hours. :) Edited by sfuqua on 19 August 2013 at 6:40am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| casamata Senior Member Joined 4263 days ago 237 posts - 377 votes Studies: Portuguese | Message 29 of 55 19 August 2013 at 10:32am | IP Logged | ||
Honestly, I don't think it's a great idea to do this. Cien años de Soledad is such a tough novel, even for natives, that the 50th anniversary commemorative edition has a glossary of about 30 pages for terms that *natives* usually don't know too well. Words like "diáfana/o" and "ciénaga." I haven't read your other posts, but I'm assuming that you will have to look up a LOT of words and that it won't be too enjoyable. I only started to read this book after about 5,000 hours of Spanish under my belt and after I had just spent 8 months abroad in 100% immersion. Personally, I would try easier novels, but that's just me. 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 30 of 55 19 August 2013 at 5:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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casamata, I can't say that I disagree with you, as a tool for learning Spanish. The book is way too hard, and a lot of the vocabulary in it is uncommon. Any of this rare vocabulary that I learn, I will probably promptly forget, so it is "wasted effort".
I'm not looking up everything; I'm using L-R, which sort of lets you flow over the page and let as many words stick as will. The two words you mention are words that have moved solidly into my passive vocabulary from the book. I've actually seen "diáfana/o" in a couple of other contexts, once when listening to the radio, and once when reading something else. It has a nice cognate in English so it is easy to remember. "ciénaga" shows up every other page in the book; it's a shame if it isn't the common word for swamp. There is one overriding reason to read this book. I really want to read it. I hope this will get me through. If I learn a lot of weird vocabulary, well that's better than not knowing a lot of vocabulary. When I started reading English, my native language, I read a lot of books that were way too hard for me. Right after the "See Spot run. Run, Spot, run." stage, I read 1984, Brave New World, and Fail Safe. I read those books in English and this one in Spanish, not to learn to read, but to learn in content. As I said in the beginning, I think you're probably right about this book as a choice for a learner at my level learning Spanish. I'm impatient to get through this, "I'm learning Spanish" stage. I'll always be learning Spanish, but I want to start "using" it. :) 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 31 of 55 20 August 2013 at 1:05am | IP Logged | ||
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I have thought about the 300 hours of FSI v. 300 hours of LR quite a bit and posted about it on the forum. There is no way they are equal... the same amount of time on FSI will take you MUCH MUCH farther than equal time of LR. It is not even close. The big difference is how much time you can spend doing each method. LR has the MAJOR advantage of being able to spend hours after hours doing it. I can only handle about 1 hour of FSI a day and about 4 hours a week... but, with a good book, I could LR for 3-4 hours a day every day. I think LR is good for people who have a ton of time on their hands. FSI is perfect for the person who is motivated, dedicated and has about an hour a day. Edited by James29 on 20 August 2013 at 1:05am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| casamata Senior Member Joined 4263 days ago 237 posts - 377 votes Studies: Portuguese | Message 32 of 55 20 August 2013 at 1:24am | IP Logged | ||
Ciénaga is a very rare word in normal speech. I was talking to an educated Mexican guy who speaks amazing Luca-level English by the way (and is like B1 in French even though he studies it grudgingly due to school) and he was embarrassed because he didn't know it. Well, wanting to read it is definitely a good enough reason! I just remember having to look up like 10 words per page and that is even though I consider vocab to be one of my top strengths in Spanish. The problem with these types of books is that the vocab is kind of low-yield or even useless. I've started to read "normal" informal-language books to not clutter my head with academic language that nobody uses. In case you didn't know, peeps say "pantano." But regardless, I still think that it is more efficient and less frustrating to gradually increase the difficulty level. Why not read "el coronel no tiene quien le escriba" in case you haven't? It is like 150 pages and easier to digest, in my mind. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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