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Reading with Spanish Readers | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5711 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 9 of 27 22 October 2012 at 12:02am | IP Logged | |||||
I actually went through my DVD collection a while back and I have a nice little stack of American made movies (sorry, estadounidense) with Spanish subtitles. How can I get the subtitles off of those? I actually have Pan's Labyrinth, too, because it's an amazing movie, but I haven't watched it since I started learning Spanish; you can probably guess the reason. The more I listen to the Castilian accent the more aversion I feel towards it. Nothing against it, I think it's just psychological; instead of listening and enjoying, I'm listening and straining to understand. I'm just not used to it yet. I think I'd rather stick with LA Spanish until I'm solidly intermediate. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5261 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 10 of 27 22 October 2012 at 3:38am | IP Logged | |||||
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Rout, I can't help you with your aversion to Castillian/Iberian Spanish. All I can tell you is that you are only cheating yourself by actively avoiding it- your choice, obviously. You can find Spanish subtitles easily for US movies simply by searching for "insert movie name" plus the word "subs" or "subtitles" on google. The site allsubs.org is a good place to start. Download the English subs and you can make your own bilingual parallel text.
Here's how to make your own parallel text, if you're in to that sort of thing. Create a word document and insert a table with one row and two columns. Copy the Spanish subs and insert them in the left hand side of the table. Copy the English subs and paste them in the right hand side of the table. You'll have to align them yourself. Odds are pretty good that the time stamps won't match and there may be translations of visuals, English writing presented as subs, that are obviously not given in the English subs.Plus sometimes the English sentence will be longer than the Spanish one and vice-versa. When complete, save your word (or open office) document and print it to pdf to view on your tablet, or print it to hard copy. There's a lot you can do with subs. Emk has good, detailed instructions on subs2srs and anki with subs. It takes some work. Free ain't easy and often not convenient, but it can definitely be worth the time and trouble. Your course won't teach you everything. Great resources aren't always out there. Sometimes, you have to make your own. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5711 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 11 of 27 23 October 2012 at 7:52am | IP Logged | |||||
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Over the past few days I've finished reading the last 32 pages of book 2 (Sigamos Leyendo) and read 20 pages of book 3 (La Buenaventura y Otros Cuentos) of Castillo and Sparkman's Graded Spanish Readers. I was doing the ejercicios at the end of each book, however, though they do seem useful in many ways, I don't think I'll continue doing them since it takes up so much time (time in which I could instead be reading). The questions aren't hard anyway, and there is no answer key. All the stories in these new books are adaptations of authentic literature and are surprizingly interesting. I had an anomolously busy weekend with my family, and there were sections I couldn't read aloud. I'll try to make sure not to get stuck in the habit of reading silently yet.
Other things I've done over the past few days: - Shadowed lessons 36, 37, 38 of Living Language - Beginner Intermediate - Had my first two sessions of conversation practice via skype. My first tutor seemed professional, but he wasn't very affable and to be honest I felt less confident in my abiities after having the lesson. He also had a strong DF accent which was new to me. My second tutor was from Bogotá and doesn't speak English. She's never taught before, but she has such a great attitude that I just wanted to keep talking to her; she actually kept asking me questions 15 minutes after our session ended. She's such a nice person and her corrections and explanations (in Spanish) are very helpful, my confidence has skyrocketed. I'm in love with the Columbian accent now, too! I Thought it was interesting that they use "vale" for "O.K." like in Spain. - I'm in the process of typing out and reviewing everything we went over in the lesson. I tried to record the lesson in audacity, but it was a no-go. Definitely want to do this in the future. - Wrote several journal entries which I had corrected at lang-8. This book is amazing, but I think it gives people the impression that my Spanish might be better and more natural sounding than it actually is. :) - Watched several hours of Spanish TV of which I can understand more and more. It's weird, sometimes I don't even realize I'm watching TV in Spanish. Yay. :) - I discovered the wonders of Sharedtalk this past weekend. It's amazing! I'd used it in the past for German, but wasn't impressed. The time difference made it so, that hardly any Germans were online when I was. This is the complete opposite for Spanish. I usually can only handle about 3 conversations, and if one person is particularly chatty then I'll revert to English (which is usually what they want to learn) with the others and focus on the liveliest of the conversations. I've spent hours on here and made tons of friends which I've added to skype. I do the text chats in Sharedtalk which is a great run up to the conversation lessons. The only downsides (if there are any) are that a lot of people (even educated ones) will use internet slang/abbreviations (e.g., "porq", or worse "xq") and completely disregard the orthography rules (e.g., "espanol", or worse "espanhol"), and I've probably spent too many hours on here at the expense of book-in-hand study. Somewhere, on this site, long ago I read a posting that said (if I remember correctly), while conversing, it's easiest when both people type, harder when the other person speaks (via mic) and you type, harder yet when these roles are reversed, and hardest when you communicate voice-to-voice. I'd like to try all of these scenarios at some point very soon. Edited by Rout on 23 October 2012 at 8:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5711 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 12 of 27 23 October 2012 at 8:10am | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you! I follow all EMK's posts that I have time for since our goals are similar, I'll have to check this one out.
I could see how that would be, but I'd rather wait till I can listen to it, enjoy it, and relish the differences. If I skipped straight to the material I desired (which is advocated by some), then I'd throw away my bilingual readers and pick up Don Quijote, after which point I'd probably drop the subject altogether due to loss of confidence. I went down the pensinsular Spanish route once before (a couple of years ago), and it was just too confusing since I was speaking (overlearned phrases) at work every day (and with a LA accent). I don't want that to happen again, but I also don't want to give anyone the impression that I have any disdain whatsoever for peninsular Spanish; I just want to save it for when I can enjoy it. I'm cheating myself now so I don't cheat myself in the future (if that makes sense). Who knows maybe I'll end up taking on a Castilian accent at some point. After all, the world would be a sad place for speakers of American English if James Joyce, Monty Python, and the Beatles didn't exist, so I understand the sentiment. :p By the way, does anyone know of a forum similar to HTLAL (i.e., a forum about foreign language learning) but is intended for Spanish speakers and written in Spanish? This subject is more than a little interesting to me! Edited by Rout on 23 October 2012 at 8:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5711 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 13 of 27 25 October 2012 at 8:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Reading:
Over the past couple of days I've finished reading the last 16 pages of book 3 (La Buenaventura y Otros Cuentos) and read 26 pages of book 4 (Aventuras de Gil Blas) of Castillo and Sparkman's Graded Spanish Readers. I have to say, these little books are great and very interesting for graded readers. All of the stories I'm reading now are by Spanish masters (though they are edited versions). I've also adjusted my schedule so that I get the bulk of my reading done in the morning, before I get going. I just keep the book by the side of my bed. This seems to energize me. Unlike English or German, if I try to read when I'm relaxed (right be before I go to sleep), I easily lose my concentration. I'm surprized at how easy reading is becoming for me (at times). I can't wait to start volume II. Other things I've done over the past couple of days: - Shadowed lessons 39 and 40 of Living Language - Beginner Intermediate. I've now shadowed the complete book and I have some mixed opinions. If you're a complete beginner, it's going to be quite a challenge, on the other hand if you've been through something like FSI it might slow you down - though it might still be challenging and add to your vocab, I think it's made me more accustomed to speaking at a slower, didactic pace (kind of reversing the automaticity I got from the FSI materials). I'm going to go back through and do a vocab sweep making sure I know absolutely everything, then try to translate 3 dialogs a day. I'm also going to edit down all the audio into just the dialogs, speed them up about 10-20%, and do a couple of shadowing marches. I'll let you know how it goes. - I had a couple of more conversational practice sessions. Turns out my tutor from Columbia has taught before, several times. This makes sense; she's so professional. She just doesn't like to identify herself as a teacher. I also tried another teacher from Mexico, and he's really good. He gave me a test where I had to make a story describing some drawings. He really tried to hone in on my weak points. Also, since a lot of the customers I interact with are from Mexico, knowing to use words like "tomar" or "recoger" in place of "coger" can be useful, haha. I think I've winnowed my tutors down to the 3 I’ll be keeping with which I'll be having 1 hour conversation lessons Mon., Wed., and Fri. for now. This will give me time to review and memorize the vocab from one session to the next. - My translation project for telenovelas is on hold for now. I want to get my listening comprehension up first. - Wrote several journal entries which I had corrected at lang-8. I wrote down some phrases (in English) while I was at work that I use there every day and I'm translating those into Spanish and having them checked. - I watched a couple of hours of Spanish TV but not as much as usual. I've been trying to focus more on reading for input, while taking my output to the next level. - I had a couple of conversations on sharedtalk, but I've noticed I get fatigued faster if I do this too close to bed time. - I've done some work with the Practice Makes Perfect workbooks but I don't know if I'll have time to squeeze these in at this moment. I need to find time to work on my subjunctive for output purposes. Edited by Rout on 06 November 2012 at 4:45am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5261 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 14 of 27 25 October 2012 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Looks like you're progressing well with a good "multi-track" approach to learning Spanish. Sticking to this approach and changing things up when you need to will yield good results for you, I'm sure. Keep up the good work!
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| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5711 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 15 of 27 26 October 2012 at 2:34am | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks Iguana! I could have easily categorized this blog as one of those 6 week Total Anhiliation watch-a-ma-callits, since I'm basically free 5 days out of the week right now (Thank God for mini-mesters!), and I have a lot of free time to study, immerse in, and revise my Spanish. The reason I didn't is because I plan to get through ALL of my bilingual readers, which will take a while even going full-out. I have roughly six more weeks to try and get as far as I can, before reverting back to a more austere allocation of time for my Spanish studies. Right now I'm doing anything that seems like it might benefit me (and I'm at the stage where just about anything does). So if you know any secrets or slightly-magical bullets, then please let me know. =) Edited by Rout on 06 November 2012 at 4:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5261 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 16 of 27 26 October 2012 at 3:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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There are no magic bullets, not even slightly magic ones, unfortunately. It takes a lot of work to get through the intermediate stage, even in a so-called "easy" language like Spanish. Reading widely, as you are doing, will expose you to good phrasing, new vocabulary and loads of idiomatic expressions. Working with a tutor, as you are doing, will help solidify that knowledge with instant feedback. Skype language exchanges are great for that too.
You could give Veinte Mundos Intermedio a try. It's a "magazine" with audio about varied and interesting topics with difficult words hyperlinked to where you can mouse-over and get a definition/explanation in English. Fifteen minutes a day with a veinte mundos article could help out a lot. Also with lang8, the key is to be helpful in corrections to the Spanish-speakers who are learning English by going above and beyond mere "word crossing out" to explain why a certain word or phrase is more appropriate in English by providing more detail. You will soon become quite popular and people will start going the extra mile for you too. Lastly, I think the best $10 you'll ever spend to help you with your Spanish is Breaking Out of Beginner's Spanish by Joseph J. Keenan. It's not a course but more of a guide to what an English speaker needs to do in order to get Spanish more "right". It was written by an American whose Spanish was once halting and imperfect too. His chapter on the subjunctive alone is worth the price of the book in my opinion. Regardless of whether you take any of my suggestions or not, I do think you are doing well in your studies. Ultimately, you will be successful. I was once where you are. I made it through and so will you. Just "keep on keepin' on" 'mano! Edited by iguanamon on 26 October 2012 at 4:03am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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