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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| mjrobertson Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6477 days ago 40 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 36 07 March 2013 at 9:08pm | IP Logged |
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So, this is my new language log that will detail my efforts to learn Spanish. I've been
chasing this goal off and on (mostly off) for the last few years and have made some progress but not as much as I would have liked. My previous attempts have all puttered out after a while, mostly due to life and work commitments intervening and not being able to stick to a regular study regime. What can I say, life happens... It would be very fair to say that I'm some kind of advanced beginner, knowing various bits and pieces about the language and being able to use it to a certain (limited) extent. If I suddenly found myself in Spanish speaking country tomorrow, I could probably manage to survive, albeit with a considerable amount of difficulty. I have a variety of self study courses at my disposal, as well as various grammar books and readers. Assimil, Living Language etc...the usual suspects. My first goal is to work my way through Linguaphone Complete Spanish, which is a beginner to intermediate level course. It is actually marketed as taking one through 'Beginner to Advanced' but upon quickly flicking through the workbooks, I was surprised to see that I can already understand a great deal of it. Not perfectly, by any means, but it's hardly knocking me out with its ferocious complexity. I don't care if I master the content of the course, I simply want to reach the end of it. I'm trying to do something in Spanish almost every day - for me, I think it's the only way that I'll be able to make solid and sustainable progress. So, first goal...get on with Linguaphone and make it through to the end. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Phantom Kat Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5065 days ago 160 posts - 253 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Finnish | Message 2 of 36 09 March 2013 at 12:47am | IP Logged |
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¡Buena suerte! I know what you mean about doing something in the target language every
day, even if it's only a little. I hope to see your updates soon! - Kat 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mjrobertson Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6477 days ago 40 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 36 18 March 2013 at 8:56pm | IP Logged |
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I've been away from home for the last 5 days and was unable to stick to my plan of
doing something every day in Spanish. However, in saying that I did have to briefly use some Spanish when my wife had an appointment at the Argentinean Consulate. She had to sort out some paperwork, so I waited in the reception area for her. Suddenly, the receptionist started talking to me in Spanish. I wasn't really paying attention so I didn't really catch the start of what she was saying, but given the situation it was pretty clear that she was asking if I needed any help. So I managed to say that I was waiting for my wife and that she was already inside. No doubt I made some mistakes but that seemed to go over ok. Today I got back to my Anki revision. It's amazing how quickly I can forget things that I haven't looked at for only a handful of days. Tomorrow, I will resume my Linguaphone studies. I've also been doing a little reading of Mafalda comic strips (available in an IOS app now). I can almost totally understand some of the strips whereas others are way over my head. A bit of a mixed bag but it's fun to read it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| mjrobertson Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6477 days ago 40 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 36 19 March 2013 at 9:12pm | IP Logged |
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I commute to work every day which gives me, depending on the train, around 60 to 90 minutes of study time. It has become my habit to revise my Anki deck in the morning and listen to some audio or browse grammar or textbooks. My Anki deck is currently sitting at about 270 words and I plan to add new words every week. I've no idea how many words I currently know, but excluding cognates it must be several hundred at least. Although, in saying that, I certainly have a long way to go as far as vocabulary building is concerned.
I consider my commute study time to be 'B' grade study. It's not in ideal environment and there are many distractions, but it has allowed me to ensure that I'm doing something in Spanish almost every day. I guess it's the equivalent of snacking on Spanish. I'm learning things here and there but it's not the same as focused study at home. I aim to get 30 minute a day of high quality study at home. I'd like to talk about a couple of books, one I've had for a while and one that I bought today. Firstly, there is Just Enough Spanish Grammar Illustrated by Gabriele Stobbe. I read quite a bit during my commute today and it struck me that it has quite a fresh approach to learning grammar. It seems like it has been written for teens or high school students but that's not to say that adult learners won't find it useful. It deals with Spanish grammar by talking a lot about English grammar and then comparing it to Spanish grammar. As the title suggests, it breaks things down in a very visual way. There are lots of arrow and diagrams that point out things like what the object, subject and adjectives are in a sentence and how they related to each other and work together. I didn't realise that there are descriptive adjectives and limiting adjectives. It would be fair to call my knowledge of English grammar 'limited'. If you want to learn about the nuts and bolts of grammar in general and how it all kinds of works and hangs together, then it's a reasonably good book to check out. It covers the most important topics 'Just Enough' and I'm feeling that it'll help me with the process of language learning in general. The second book, which I picked up today, is Modern Spanish Grammar - A Practical Guide by Juan Katan-Ibarra and Christopher J. Poulain. It's a beast of a text book, large in format and weighing in at 446 pages. I've only quickly skimmed through it so far but it appears to be an absolute goldmine of information on how to actually use Spanish. For example, Chapter 39 is titled Expressing Location and Distance and discusses the many sentence structures that can be used e.g. how do bajo, debajo de, de, en, encima de, enfrente de, entre etc. etc. work. It is not so much a book for learning or practicing verb conjugation but learning more about how things are used and what are the, possibly subtle, ways of expressing the same thing in different ways. I'm sure this book will be hugely helpful all the way through my studies. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who plans to work on their Spanish long term. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mjrobertson Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6477 days ago 40 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 36 20 March 2013 at 9:04pm | IP Logged |
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I bought some pencils today and as luck would have it, they had 'instructions' in
Spanish on the back of the packet. So I now know the verb 'afilar' - 'to sharpen' and a few other things writing related things that I didn't know before. A few days ago I added the word 'procedencia' ('place of origin', amongst other things) to my Anki deck, and I remember thinking that it would be unlikely that I'd have much use for it, but the pencil packet mentioned 'procedence', saying that they were ecologically sourced. So, there you go, you never know when seemingly unimportant things will pop up in real world use. In other Anki related news, I added about 80 new verbs from my Collins grammar book. I noted that in the index it lists more than 1200 other verbs. I think it will take me a while to get through all of those! I imagine that a couple of hundred of the most common / useful ones will do to start off with.d My sole, immediate goal of completing the Linguaphone Complete course still remains in focus. I'll get right on with it as soon as I've posted this message. Good luck to everyone with their studies! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mjrobertson Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6477 days ago 40 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 36 21 March 2013 at 11:16pm | IP Logged |
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More Anki and Linguaphone today. I'm currently on Unit 3 (of 4) in Level 1 Book 1. It's
all very easy stuff in the beginning, all of which I am very familiar with. Still, there's no harm to go over super basic stuff again and pick up a few minor points here and there. The Linguaphone course is composed of 6 books: 2 for Level 1, 2 for Level 2, and 2 for Level 3. The levels don't really mean anything, it's just a way of chunking up the course. It breaks down like this: Level 1: 196 pages Level 2: 225 pages Level 3: 221 pages So, that's a total of 642 pages. That sounds like a huge amount but there's a lot of pictures, diagrams, answer keys, transcriptions and other summaries in each book. Each page is also divided into an English column and a Spanish column, so again the content is really halved. The first books mostly gets you used to the Linguaphone method, which is more or less: - read - listen and read - listen and repeat - listen and speak - speak I'll try to describe much more about Linguaphone as I progress through the course, as it doesn't seem like there is much detailed information about recent versions from people who have actually gone through the whole thing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mjrobertson Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6477 days ago 40 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 36 23 March 2013 at 7:09pm | IP Logged |
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Continued with Linguaphone today. There is a great temptation to relax on the weekends and avoid studying. I decided to overcome this by studying in bite sized chunks. I think that setting a daily target and working towards it in chunks works well for me. Three study periods of 30 minutes each is far more achievable and effective than a solid 90 minute block.
So...Linguaphone. I'm now getting into a kind of rhythm with it and starting to enjoy it. The start of course is naturally extremely basic, so I found it a little boring and was impatient to progress onto more challenging material. However, I persevered and have been doing all of the exercises and more or less following the read, listen and read, listen and repeat etc. method. Establishing good habits now will no doubt pay dividends when I get into the real meat of the course. I feel it's important not to quickly skip over things that seem very obvious or basic. I've got to work with the material in front of me and make the most of the opportunity for repetition and knowledge retention. The challenge is to learn and internalise the material, not just understand it at the moment that I'm going through it. One of the best things about Linguaphone is that at the end of every unit there is a summary of all of the sentences I've learned. Unit 3, which I'm about three quarters of the way through, has 3 summary sections At a conference, In the office / on the telephone, and In Salamance / In the restaurant. It's nothing really new or difficult so far but it is good to go through it. Later content should be ideal for putting into Anki. Grammar content is very light. Linguaphone does not appear to be a grammar centred course at all. So far it's made some very brief references to it, but in a very general, non-frightening way. I do quite like to know about the in depth workings of grammar, but I'm not that concerned as I have lots of other materials that deal with it. One feature that I both like and dislike is the way that it wants the reader / listener to come up with their own exercises and methods of remembering things. The book is made up of nothing but lots and lots of mini exercises punctuated by audio listening clips and has various suggestions for how you might go about creating your own self tests / ways of learning. This is good because I think it is hugely beneficial to be able to freely play with any learned language and to be able to mix it up and make your own sentences. I am religiously speaking out loud when instructed to do so (and even when not). My wife must think I'm crazy. On the other hand, the lazy part of me just wants to work through what's in front of me and no more. Kind of like "Tell me what to do and I'll do it. Don't make me do more work than is absolutely necessary." I guess that sometimes I don't really know when I'm done with something. I might think e.g. ok I have the Spanish number system down pat, but that doesn't mean that I can actively use it at will in any given situation. The knowledge needs to go from passive storage to active use, and that is the thing that I'm not so good it. I think there's a huge gap from having a strong passive base (quite easy) to having a strong active usage of language (very hard). There's tons of things I know Spanish wise but they haven't been activated and organised into coherent structures yet. There are also some useful end of units checks to test progress: - I can understand the key language - I can repeat the key language - I understand the language patterns - I can use the language freely I'm hoping to largely be able to pass these self checks. The exercises etc. are not very challenging (at the moment), and in my experience language course exercises generally tend to be articially easy so I'm going to try to do more self testing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mjrobertson Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6477 days ago 40 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 36 25 March 2013 at 9:41pm | IP Logged |
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My first milestone is in sight as I should be finished with Level 1, Book 1 of
Linguaphone within the next 3 or 4 days. It's been plain sailing so far and I haven't really encountered any difficulties, which is to be expected at this early stage. My Anki deck is up to around 400 words now. I'm trying to add as many common place words as I can, mostly the objects that I encounter every day at home and in the office. My review today took around 15 minutes, up from around 5 minutes when I first started out with Anki. It seems to be a useful tool and is really helping me to keep Spanish in my mind every day. Tonight, my wife and I watched part 1 of the tv mini series of the Steven King novel, Salem's Lot, on dvd with English audio and Spanish subtitles. There isn't a lot of complex talking or conversations in it, it's more like exchanges of information between characters. The Spanish subtitles match the English audio quite well, so I was pleased to find that I could understand a fair bit of it. Listening to it in Spanish audio would be a different matter - then I would be able to understand very little. Also did a little more reading of Mafalda. Mafalda y el ajedrez is fairly easy to read for my beginner level of Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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