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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 41 of 55 24 August 2013 at 6:11am | IP Logged |
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Day 26 96%
There are still clumps of unknown vocabulary in places that make the book completely incomprehensible. I think I'm going to have forgotten too much of my first trip through when I start the second one. I experimented a little with stuff from the beginning, and the results weren't good. We'll see. L-R certainly teaches things about language beyond vocabulary, the crude measure I've been using. I am definitely more comfortable processing language at full speed than I was when I started. I'll finish my first trip through tomorrow. The book is wonderful; I'm near the end now. :) 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 42 of 55 25 August 2013 at 5:45am | IP Logged |
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Day 27 96%
I finished my first trip through the book today. For a story with as much humor in it as this one has, I was a little sideswiped by the horror of the ending. In case there is someone here who is hasn't read the book yet I'm going to leave out spoilers. I finished the book with a loud, "Oh my God!" It may be the best book I ever read, whatever that means. It is certainly in my top five, whatever that means. Now, back to learning Spanish. If I follow the L-R dogma, I've got two more trips through the book to learn it thoroughly. Of course I'm nowhere near following the actual L-R plan in that I'm not doing several hours of L-R a day, not even the 2 hours that aYa says is the minimum. I've been thinking of working through L-R steps one chapter at a time, finishing one chapter before I move ahead to the next. I was thinking that I might do the following with each chapter: Listen L2/Read L1 3X Listen L2/Read L2 1X Listen L2/Shadow L2 1X or 2X or maybe just read it aloud. I can get through about one step with each chapter each day, so that's about 5 days a chapter, or 50 more days. I said "was thinking" in the sentences above because of the way the book blew me out of the water in the last few pages. I'm sort of inclined to just do Listen L2/Read L1 through the whole book a couple of more times. I'll sleep on it, if I don't have too many nightmares. :| Edited by sfuqua on 25 August 2013 at 7:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4848 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 43 of 55 25 August 2013 at 8:24am | IP Logged |
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If the book is that good, I should start learning Spanish!
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| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4766 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 44 of 55 26 August 2013 at 3:23am | IP Logged |
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Macondo second trip through
Day % known 1 85 2 92 3 84 4 84 5 87 6 89 7 91 8 92 9 88.5 10 92.5 11 91.5 12 94 13 nada 14 95 15 95 16 95 17 96 18 95 19 94 20 91 21 95 22 91 23 95 24 92 25 94 26 96 27 96 28 97 I started through the book the second time today. I L-R'ed the first two chapters in 72 minutes. I got my highest known word % score. The material is quite clear most of the time. OK, tomorrow I have to decide if I want to move forward or if I want to repeat the first two chapters again. One way to approach the book would be to repeat each two chapters until the comprehension rate gets up to 98%, the "magical" level where unknown words don't effect comprehension (much), and then shadow it and call it done, and move on. This might be a better way to approach a book for someone who doesn't have time for multiple hours a day of L-R, assuring that the same vocabulary words come up frequently enough to be remembered. Just continuing forward would be more like reading a book, repeating a couple of chapters would be more like doing lessons. To repeat chapters or to repeat the book...? :) edited to try to fix ugly formatting... gave up Edited by sfuqua on 26 August 2013 at 3:27am 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 45 of 55 27 August 2013 at 3:50am | IP Logged |
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Day 29 97%
I kept moving through the book... 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 46 of 55 27 August 2013 at 5:38am | IP Logged |
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I was really tired during my session today, and there was a lot of rewinding due to me losing track of what I was doing. I tried all my tricks to wake up to no avail. I think I need a good night's sleep.
I decided to keep moving through the book in order to keep my interest level up. Even if I just finished the book, reading through it from end to end is more interesting than reading one chapter several times. One thing interesting about L-R is that it is easy to overestimate how many words are unfamiliar in a passage if you just scan them. From Listening to Spanish while reading English, I have learned (or half learned) a lot of words, but I don't necessarily recognize them unless I read them out loud. Now, a glass of wine, and a night's sleep... :) 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 47 of 55 29 August 2013 at 4:20am | IP Logged |
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Day 30 98%! but I don't think my comprehension was very complete...
Day 31 99%!!! Today, day 31, I shifted gears completely. I had assumed that I had started at stage 3, as aYa says that you can, but the stages are 1) read in L1 2) listen L2, read L2 3) Listen L2, read L1, three times. 4) listen L2, shadow L2 I never really read all the way through the book years ago in English; I would certainly have remembered the ants... So what I was calling a stage 3 was actually my real stage 1. Well enough of stages, who cares. I started the book again from the beginning listening to L2 and reading L2, and much to my surprise, I am pretty close to being able to follow it completely. I keep seeing words that I don't know that pop into focus because i know the story so well. My language acquisition device seems to really like this; I feel like I'm learning words like lightning, especially when I'm hearing them and seeing them in Spanish in a context where I know what they mean. It's a real thrill to read Gabo with any level of understanding without any English support. Not everything is perfect of course, if my concentration slips or I hit a sentence completely full of unfamiliar words, it all turns into noise in my ears and squiggles on the page, but this only happens occasionally, and it's usually for just one sentence. A couple of times I rewound to have a second shot at a passage. I'm going to keep on like this; I may shift to do one chapter stage 3 and one chapter stage 2 each day, if the going gets too tough later in the book. This L-R stuff can be very useful, if you are patient enough to go over the same book a few times. I definitely will be able to understand all of CADS soon, and if I can get to the point where I can understand it and shadow it, well, I will have learned a lot of Spanish. It's tempting to move on to another book, but I feel like I'm still learning a lot with CADS, and there are many layers of understanding of the book that I have yet to reach. :) Edited by sfuqua on 29 August 2013 at 4:23am 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 48 of 55 30 August 2013 at 5:01am | IP Logged |
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Macondo Day 32 97%
Today I did: Listen L2 Read L2 with chapter 2 and Listen L2 Read L1 with chapter 3. Tomorrow I intend to do the same thing with chapters 3 and 4 respectively. Fatigue was a big problem today. I was very tired after work and my workout (swimming), so I kept having trouble concentrating and even keeping my eyes open... I generally did not have the sense of accomplishment and ease that I had yesterday. We'll see what tomorrow brings. :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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