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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4767 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes  Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 36 08 April 2013 at 5:28am | IP Logged |
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Well, I've been seduced by reading novels in Spanish. All of my plans to finish FSI in the next few months have leaked away. I started reading, basically a form a listening reading that is close to what you do with Assimil in the passive wave, every other day. I kept making excuses when it was my "FSI day" why I should read.
I've given up to reading for now. I have had several enthusiasms for different materials or methods during my time studying, and I don't know how long this one will last, but I've decided to go for it. FSI/Platiquemos will be there if/when I want to go back. I started out reading La Reina del Sur. When I figured out that, by using a translation and an audiolibro, I could read it, I realized that I could read almost anything. An exploration of the local libraries, bookstores, and my bookshelf showed that I have many choices. After looking around the web and listening to samples, I decided to buy IVONA's Reader software and their Miguel voice. I know many people hate tts voices, but I think IVONA's Spanish voices are great. It's good to have them around because then I can add new stories from the Internet to my diet. Here's what I've done: 1) Take a novel that looks interesting and see if I can get copies of the Spanish and and English, especially used versions. This is trivial, generally. 2) Find, or make, a copy of the book that can be fed into a TTS system. 3) Feed it into IVONA/Miguel (LA Spanish, male) (I've got to decide if I'm going to get Pénelope (LA Spanish, female) or Enrique (Peninsular Spanish, male) to supplement my "stable" of voices). I've been having it produce files about 5 minutes long, read at a speed of about 160 words per minute. Audible seems to use 157 words per minute as a standard for paying readers. 4) There are a million ways to study the materials from this point. There are and infinite set of adjustments you can use. What I did today was: a) Listen L2 read L1 silently, Listen L2 read L2 silently 1X b) Listen L2 read L1 silently, Read passage aloud 3X If you are using a 5 minute passage, this takes 40-50 minutes (I seem to read aloud comfortably at about 120 words a minute) I would assume that I will be able to do fewer repeats, so I can use longer passages after a few weeks. Eventually I would hope to work up to: a)Listen L2 read L1 silently 1X b)Read aloud 1X At this rate, I could move ahead 30 minutes a day through the book with about an hour of practice every day. I like this way of working in that it leaves Spanish "echoing" in my head in a way that reminds me of the way my head would feel when I was in a total immersion situation as a Peace Corps volunteer. I'm most certainly not moving all of the new vocabulary I'm learning into my active vocabulary, but I'm keeping some of it. I'm also working through Sandberg's _Spanish for Reading_, one section at a time, which takes about 5-10 minutes a day. Edited by sfuqua on 08 April 2013 at 7:18pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4767 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 36 08 April 2013 at 5:58am | IP Logged |
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Here are some of the materials that I've looked at; I hope you can decode the titles of the books. The online calculators seem very flawed, but hopefully the errors are systematic. The Fernandez-Huerta readability formula for Spanish seems to be very flawed; the last term in the formula seems to imply that long sentences are easier to read than short sentences, a counter intuitive result. Look at the readabilty score for El otoño by Gabo.
title words&n bsp; unique readability date la Isla Allende 145404 16988 82 2009 Ines Allende 110101 14920 82 2006 Gabo putas 23954 5325 90 2004 follett mundo 657015 37851 89 200 2 La Reina 155000 17109 81 2002 Fiesta Llosa 152263 23433 79 2000 alatriste 52247 9088&nbs p; 82 1999 del amor 43564 8146 86 1994 Lituma Llosa 83978 14792 &nb sp;82 1993 Gabo general 77658 13762 86 1989 follett pilares 584640 32728 97 1987 Gringo Fuentes 57681 9015 86 1985 Crónica Gabo 29877 541 0 97 1981 Gabo patriarca 89059 11798 91 1975 Terra Fuentes 353404 46225 85 1975 Cien Años 138666 ; 16127 81 1967 Llosa verde 134999 ; 17908 84 1966 Llosa Perros 129041 & nbsp; 16244 82 &n bsp; 1963 Muerte Fuentes 95394 16967 85 1962 Gabo Coronel 19233 &nbs p;4641 82 1961 I may do a Fry readability test for each of these eventually, but I would have to do some of the calculation by hand. I've settled on Gabo's Memoria de mis putas Tristes for my first book that I'm going to go through. It is short, outrageous in topic, and the book resonates with me in that my 60th birthday is two weeks from today. The story begins with a man considering his 90th birthday, and deciding to celebrate it in a pretty unique fashion. I have no desire to regalarme una noche de amor loco con una adolescente virgen, but some of Gabo's reflections about age do ring true. At this point I'm only moving ahead about 5 minutes a day, but the book is only a little over 2 hours long. Like many language learners, I wish I could travel to a Spanish speaking country and live there for a while. This is complex for husband, father, and teacher; I doubt if I'm going to get to Mexico even this summer. Reading an actual Spanish novel allows me to spend my hour of Spanish in Columbia with Gabo, which beats a trip to the local bar to speak Spanish in some ways. Spending this much time reading, even with the reading aloud, will probably not do that much for my productive skills, at least not immediately, but it should have a rapid impact on my passive skills. I think there is something to be said for working to improve what is easy to improve, and also to have some fun. I wonder where Gabo is going with this story? Of course that last sentence is the main reason to do read a novel :) edited to try to fix the horrible formatting. steve Edited by sfuqua on 08 April 2013 at 6:09am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5377 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 3 of 36 08 April 2013 at 7:12pm | IP Logged |
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Interesting topic. After reading your log I went to the AVONA website and listened to some of the samples. Much better than the last time I tried to listen to text to audio. This interests me because I like to read some pretty obscure things that will never have Spanish audio books. Do you need an electronic version of the book in order for it to work? If I have regular books in Spanish what would I need to do to get it to read them?... scan them in? That seems unrealistic for most books. Is this AVONA software better than the software that comes with kindles and nooks?
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| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4767 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 36 08 April 2013 at 7:50pm | IP Logged |
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I think IVONA makes the voices that come with kindles. Scanning the book and doing ocr on it is one option. You will find that many books in Spanish are available as pdf's online. Many even appear to be legal to download, although I don't see how that is possible for newer books of living authors. It saves you the time of scanning and converting a book you already own legal copies of in two languages.
If you can stand the IVONA voices, and google translate English translations, the whole Spanish content of the web is available for listening-reading with no question of legality in most cases. I love the way that you can shift the speed with the tts voices. Now Miguel, the IVONA voice, chattering away at 200 words a minute is not exactly that same thing as Miguel, the DJ, chattering away on the radio, but learning to understand one should help one learn to understand the other. If you just can't parse a paragraph at 160 words per minute, you can slow it down to an Assimil-like 120 words per minute, where things may fall into place in your mind more easily. I'm spending my time on the exercise bike at the gym listening to parts of books that I've already listened-read, and listening to them at 180 words per minute. The Spanish of the IVONA voices seems to be pretty middle of the road, without too many regionalisms of accent. The Latin American ones sound sort of "Columbian" to my untrained ear. I hope to start moving through books faster in a couple of weeks. If I can start covering 10-15 minutes of new material every day, getting through some pretty big books becomes feasible. Right now I've got the following cued up with Spanish editions, translations, and audiobooks: Memoria de mis putas tristes by Gabo Inés by Allende Zorro by Allende Del amor y otro Demonios by Gabo La Fiesta del Chivo by Vargas-Llosa La Reina del Sur Pérez-Reverte Los Pilares Follet (translation) I'm not sure where I'll go next after Memoria by Gabo. I've got to believe that getting through several novels in Spanish would have a big impact on my Spanish. Even if it doesn't, it would be fun. Edited by sfuqua on 08 April 2013 at 8:48pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5377 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 5 of 36 08 April 2013 at 9:33pm | IP Logged |
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Holy cow! It did not even cross my mind to simply have the reader read Spanish websites. That would be awesome. How much does it cost for just a basic personal edition for two computers? I could not figure that out on the website. This could be amazing. There is tons of good stuff online for which I would love to have Spanish audio.
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| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4767 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 36 09 April 2013 at 12:17am | IP Logged |
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I fool around with google news in Spanish and can sort of listening-reading them, although news articles are usually easy enough that it is better just to look up the words I don't know.
If you get reader for one computer, with one voice, it costs $84. It looks like three computers with 2 Spanish voices is $179. IVONA responds quickly to emails (within a day), so you could just ask them. I'm torn right now about what voices to add to Miguel. It is very nice to listen to more than one version of a passage, especially if you need to listen to it more than once. I also find that google translate English translations can be quite usable for learning, even if they are poor translations. The google translations tend to keep the same word order as the word order in the Spanish version, and even if they have obvious errors, it is pretty easy usually to tell what the Spanish probably says. Another option is to use their Mini reader, and use audacity to capture the audio to mp3 if you want to save it. The mini reader, which is free, could be installed on several computers, and then the only question is how many computers the voice could be installed on. Potentially, you could get one voice, say Miguel or Penélope, for about 45 dollars for one computer or $81 for three. They offer nice, 30 day, free trials, which is more than enough to decide if the voices will work for you. I think they will work for me. Now that I've started playing around with the IVONA voices, I don't know how I got along before. I notice that the voices don't need to breathe as much as I do; long sentences from a novel get read in one go. I usually set up the voices to have slightly longer than the default pause for commas and periods, to make up for this on material I'm going to shadow. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4767 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 36 15 April 2013 at 1:11am | IP Logged |
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I've had an excellent few days going through Memoria de mis putas tristes by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I'm still treating the material more like an Assimil lesson than like traditional L-R. I'm repeating the steps on each mp3 file in the audiobook, and then shadowing through past lessons to finish the rest of the time.
My reading comprehension is improving rapidly; I can get through news stories on the Internet with little problem. Of course there are vocabulary words I don't know, but I seem to know enough that I can guess the meaning of the missing words. I have a lot of Spanish rattling around in my head. Gabo is probably over my head to start out on, but I seem to have survived so far; I understand 95% of it after three times through repeating the steps 1)read English listen to Spanish 2) read Spanish listening to Spanish. I find it quite difficult to shadow at 160 words per minute the first few times through; I do much better at 120 words a minute. After I understand the passage, I shadow it while reading the Spanish, and then shadow the past few files. I definitely am seeing and understanding words that I learned from Memoria. While I am obviously learning quickly, I haven't noticed any change in my speaking. I fooled around yesterday with some movie subtitle files. I haven't figured out yest exactly how I want to do this. Subtitle sentences sure do look short and simple compared to sentences from a novel. I find it hard to believe that 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4767 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 36 25 April 2013 at 5:08am | IP Logged |
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I roared through a bunch of _Memoria de mis putas tristes_. Oddly enough for an old, jaded Asia hand like me, I found myself being a little offended by the book. I just had my 60th birthday, and I guess I hope that if I ever reach 90, I'll have more insight than the protagonist does at the beginning of the book.
I will readily admit that Gabo may know about human nature than I do, and I imagine nobody cares about my ignorant reflections on literature written by my betters. As a language learning technique, reading through a high interest book works like gangbusters for building vocabulary. I think that Memorias is a little over my head; there is at least one sentence a page where I go "huh?"; I understand every word, but I don't know what the the sentence means. I suppose Harry Potter might be about my speed, but I'm bored with young Potter, reading it to two kids as they grow up as left me pretty burnt out on Hogwarts. I also think that it is important to have a good grasp of most of Spanish grammar before you take off reading. Often it is easy to understand what a sentence means without fully parsing the grammar. I'm not sure if you ever would learn all the grammar if all you did was read. For some reason the Castilian pronunciation has been very appealing to my ear lately. It takes a little shifting gears to get back into it, but it feels nice. Edited by sfuqua on 25 April 2013 at 5:09am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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