|
 |
An experiment: 100 days of _Cien años_ | ||
Share with:
| ||
 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 49 of 55 02 September 2013 at 5:54am | IP Logged | ||
|
Macondo end of the fifth week:
day 33 97% day 34 97% day 35 98% I'm getting near halfway through CADS the second time. After a couple of days, I abandoned the Listen L2, Read L2 step for a while, and went back to Listen L2, Read L1, so that the story would go faster. The story is much easier to follow the second time around. I am heartened about how much easier it is to follow the voices Now that I'm back at my day job as middle school teacher, fatigue is my biggest enemy. I've got to work out strategies so that I'm awake enough to keep up my concentration. There is a big temptation to start another book, and I suppose that you would eventually learn a lot going through books this way, but I think that there also is something to be said for repeatedly going through the same book until is is more or less mastered Many of the words which I recognize and count as "known" for my statistics, I would not know if I saw them in another context. I'm not sure how to finish up my 100 days; I'm a little past a third of the way through. Whether this was the best book for someone with my humble Spanish skills to attack I don't know, but I have enjoyed it. As I look at other books, I keep noticing what a big impact this book has had. I'm definitely going to go through the book doing Listen L2, Read L1 one more time after this trip through. There should be plenty of time then to read the book aloud or shadow it, or preferably both. My surprise, what I've learned, after doing this variation on L-R is that if you like a story, it really helps you learn the language. :) Edited by sfuqua on 02 September 2013 at 5:55am 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 50 of 55 09 September 2013 at 10:07pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Macondo
Day 36 97% Day 37 98% Day 38 98% Day 39 99% Day 40 97% Day 41 96% Day 42 96% My comprehension level seems to be quite stable right now as I finish my second trip through CADS. Unfortunately it is a little below the point where I can just take off and read independently. I'm going to Listen L2 Read L1 through the book a third time; perhaps this will put me at the independent level. Gabo uses many unusual words, and many of these only appear one time in the book, so it can be a little challenging to learn these words from context. Many of the 16000 words in CADS, I know well within the particular context of a particular page in the story, but I might not know them if I see it again in another context. My listening comprehension and my reading comprehension are both a level higher than when I started this book. The dramatic and rapid improvement I experienced at the beginning has slowed down. I spoke Spanish with one of my students the other day; he may have had some insight. He said that my Spanish seemed mostly correct, but that I hesitated pretty often. Perhaps this is the effect of learning a lot of new words without completely integrating them. He said that my accent in pretty good; it doesn't sound like a native speaker, but it doesn't sound like an "American" accent either. Perhaps this is the result of me learning Samoan and Tagalog before I started Spanish. I have been doing anki since I started this project, but I can't really say that it is having a big impact on my comprehension. I've got a few hundred words, less than a thousand, into the process of learning, but these don't really come up that often in CADS. Many of the words in the 16000 word list only show up once, so learning them won't have that big an impact on comprehension. I recently filtered the list again so that I'll go through all of the words in the first 5000 in frequency first. I already know many of these, but I'm learning some, and concentrating on these first should increase the chances that I'll see a word while I'm reading that I've seen in anki. I experimented a little bit with shadowing the book yesterday, and it seemed pretty easy. After I complete this trip through the book, I may go through it one more time L-Ring for about a half hour a day and then shadowing the same material the same day or the next day. Edited by sfuqua on 09 September 2013 at 11:54pm 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 51 of 55 22 September 2013 at 5:24am | IP Logged | ||
|
I'm pulling the plug on 100 days of cien años after 50 days. I've L-R'ed through the book 3 times. Even a great book like Cien años can start to get old after a few times reading it.
I declare this to be a success, but I don't feel like I'm getting that much more out of it. My listening comprehension has hopped up to a higher level. So has my reading. I remain stuck solidly at the 96-99% comprehension level. This is slightly below the level where independent reading becomes easy, but well above the 85% level I was at before I began the project. Cien años can be a challenge even for native speakers, and I think that it would take more trips through the book than I have patience for to begin to get a handle on the many rare words that appear only once. I highly recommend the book and L-R, especially to those who are a little more advanced than I am. 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 52 of 55 22 September 2013 at 2:19pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Congratulations on your success. What is up 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 53 of 55 26 September 2013 at 3:23am | IP Logged | ||
|
Before I did this exercise, my passive skills were ahead of my active skills, and my 50-70 hours with Cien años just increased this difference.
I tried to do FSI a while ago, and I got seduced by reading and quit. I really think I've got to bite the bullet and hit FSI again. I'm going to try to avoid being attached to results and just keep plugging away at it, a certain number of tries per lesson. I've played around with Pimsleur a little bit this week, and while I'm not learning any new words or grammar, it does seem useful for pronunciation. It might seem silly to some for an intermediate learner, but I'm not sure that a little time on Pimsleur might be time well spent. The course is quite limited, but it does burn that basic, formal, survival stuff into you. I've got to figure out if there is anything there that I won't get out of FSI. I think I'm going to work on FSI again and try to get through this time, and I'm going to keep doing L-R to try to keep my vocabulary building. A quick try of FSI suggests that it will be easier than it was a few months ago... :) 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 54 of 55 26 September 2013 at 3:25am | IP Logged | ||
|
Wow, I didn't even congratulate you, James29, on the much more important milestones in your life.
A hearty best wishes from my family to yours! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Heriotza Groupie Dominican Republic Joined 4681 days ago 48 posts - 71 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 55 of 55 26 September 2013 at 4:09am | IP Logged | ||
How did you manage to do that? I would like to do it for some English or French novels that are particularly difficult. 1 person has voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
