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10 Weeks of Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Hoppy Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4620 days ago 26 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 1 of 12 19 April 2012 at 3:34pm | IP Logged |
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This is my first language log, so if there's anything I'm missing that you think would improve this log, please let me know. Likewise, if you think there are any other things I could be doing that would help, let me know, and if you have any comments at all, please post them.
I'm graduating soon from my undergraduate university and will be starting graduate school in Economics in the fall. I've decided that as a way of relaxing and doing something useful at the same time, I will spend the first 10 weeks of the summer learning rudimentary Spanish (after that I'll be spending the rest of the summer wilderness backpacking). I do work about 25-30 hours a week for the next 10 weeks, and I don't want to work too hard, so my goal is to study Spanish 15-20 hours per week. Something important for me is to do my Spanish language learning as inexpensively as possible. Fortunately I live on a college campus with a lot of free language materials at the library. All of the books and CDs below I've checked out from the library. Here is my plan: ~Go through Pimsleur Spanish : Quick & Simple At only 4 hours total, I don't expect this to have a huge effect on my Spanish abilities, but hopefully it will help me to pronounce some stock phrases correctly so that I can at least start interacting with Spanish speakers. ~Go through the first 20 Units of FSI Programmatic Spanish This will be more substantial, but I'm not sure how much work the 20 Units will be. If I find it too easy I could go farther. ~Learn the first 1000 words in the Routledge Spanish Frequency Dictionary Doing this in Russian helped me immensely and I hope it will do the same for Spanish. ~Go through A Student Grammar of Spanish by Batchelor I'll read the sections and do the exercises. Hopefully get through most of the important stuff during the 10 weeks. ~Attend Spanish Club coffee hours and Spanish mass The nearby Catholic church holds mass in Spanish, so I will attend that weekly, along with the undergraduate Spanish Club's coffee hours. I was raised Catholic so hopefully that will help me to not appear too lost during the service. --- My goal is to reach a high A2 or low B1 by the end of the 10 weeks. My previous experience learning Italian (equivalent of two semesters of college) should help immensely, in addition to being very disciplined about studying (much to my parents and friends surprise, I enjoy studying languages, it's not drudgery to me). I'll try to post here at least twice per week with what I've done. I'll be starting this weekend. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5380 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 2 of 12 20 April 2012 at 2:23am | IP Logged |
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Good luck and welcome to the forum. I am no expert, but I have been studying Spanish about an hour a day for about two and a half years now. I highly recommend the Michel Thomas Foundations and Advanced courses as starters. They are great and a good start for any beginner (Pimsleur is too). If your library does not have them you should request them on inter library loan. Assimil Spanish with Ease is a great course too, but you'd likely need to spend $33 to buy it on Amazon. Living Language Utimate Beginner is a good alternative to Assimil and most libraries can easily get it.
Seeing that you are an Economics student, you eventually might enjoy watching the "El Proceso Economico" series. It is a twelve hour series of beginner economics lectures from a Guatemala University. You can find it here: http://newmedia.ufm.edu/gsm/index.php/Colecciones The great thing about it is that it has a ver batim transcript that goes with it (you can also transate the transcript into English using the google transate button). I watched the series for the first time when I was at a high A2 or low B1 level. If you have any questions you should feel free to ask. If you post questions on the Advice forum you will also get good responses. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Hoppy Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4620 days ago 26 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 3 of 12 20 April 2012 at 3:12pm | IP Logged |
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I'm definitely interested in those Economics lectures since I'd like to be able to use my Spanish for work in Economics. Hopefully I will be at a level by the end of the 10 weeks to be able to get through them.
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| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5014 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 4 of 12 21 April 2012 at 8:42am | IP Logged |
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Good luck, enjoy it. I'm looking forward to reading you :-)
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| Hoppy Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4620 days ago 26 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 5 of 12 24 April 2012 at 3:35pm | IP Logged |
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Week 1 - 4/23
I've started my study of Spanish by listening to the first 3 units of Pimsleur Quick & Easy Spanish and studying frequent vocab. I've learned about 70 words from my frequency list so far and plan on increasing the number of words per day until I reach about 25 per day; that way I'll be able to reach my goal of 1000 words by the end. The Pimsleur Quick & Easy Spanish only contains 8 units (4 hours) so I will probably be finished with it by this time next week. Next week I'll start going to Spanish Club coffee hours. If I can, I'll try to go to Spanish mass this coming Sunday. For the next few days I will do Pimsleur for 30 minutes each day, listen to the Spanish Coffee Break Podcast when I have time walking to and from work, and try to start working through exercises in my grammar book. My goal is to do the chapters on Estar/Ser, Verbs Present Tense, Plurals, Articles, and Adjectives this week. There are 30 chapters, so if I do about 4-5 per week I can be done in about 7 weeks. I've skimmed the grammar book and so far it looks very easy, especially compared to German and Russian, and a lot of it is similar to Italian, which I already am familiar with. In addition I'll keep up with the vocab, hopefully getting to 150 words by this time next week. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hoppy Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4620 days ago 26 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 6 of 12 30 April 2012 at 3:24pm | IP Logged |
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Week 2 - 4/30
My progress the past week has been slightly less than I had hoped for, although I don't feel too disappointed by my slow progress. I've learned about 150 vocab words so far, so I met my goal for vocabulary. For Pimsleur Quick & Easy Spanish I've finished through unit 6, so I now have 2 units left. I've been listening to the Spanish Coffee Break Podcast some, but I'll have much more time for it now that I'm working more hours at one of jobs (where I can listen to music/podcasts while working). Unfortunately, I missed Spanish mass this Sunday and I'll probably have to miss the next two weekends too, because of other responsibilities. I also only worked through the grammar chapters on Estar/Ser and Articles. On the positive side, I've found it very easy to learn and remember what I'm learning. The vocabulary and grammar are very similar to Italian and, as in Italian, many of the words use easy to remember roots (ie creer - to believe (similar to creed, which is a belief)). My goals for the next week are: -to work through the following 5 grammar sections: Verbs Present Tense, Plurals, Adjectives, Pronunciation/Orthography, Numbers -to finish Pimsleur Quick & East Spanish; that is, the last 2 units -to start FSI Spanish and get through the first 3 chapters -get up to 250 total vocab words on Anki (from the frequency list) -pester the Spanish club officer who told me there would be conversation hours, but that she wasn't sure when they would be... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hoppy Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4620 days ago 26 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 7 of 12 07 May 2012 at 6:36pm | IP Logged |
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Week 3 - 5/7
I'm progressing steadily, but more slowly than I had originally planned for. I don't feel particularly guilty about this; I don't have any pressing need to learn Spanish, so I can take my time, and I'm also reading German literature and running, so I have plenty to fill my time. I should also mention that I'm working extra hours for the next 2 weeks or so and will therefore have less time to study. Nonetheless, I've learned about 220 vocab words on Anki, completed Pimsleur's Quick and Simple Spanish and listened to the first 18 lessons of Coffee Break Spanish Podcast. I am starting FSI Programmatic Spanish with Unit 5, since I did the first four units a long time ago and don't feel that I need the extra pronunciation help. I completed Unit 5 and also did the grammar sections Plurals and Pronunciation/Orthography. Now that I'm much deeper into learning Spanish, I'm going to calculate about how much I should do per week in order to reach some goals by the end of the 10 weeks: -I want to do all 30 grammar sections, and with 8 weeks left and 26 grammar sections to go, I'll need to do about 3 per week plus 2 extra. -I would like to finish up through FSI Programmatic Spanish Unit 20, and since I've done the first 5 sections, I'll need to average about 2 units per week. -I want to learn the first 1000 vocab words in the Spanish frequency dictionary, so that means I have 780 left to go, or about 100 per week (20 per day). Therefore my specific goals for this week are (keeping in mind my extra working hours and weekend out of town): Verbs Present Tense, Adjectives, Numbers FSI Unit 6 100 Vocab words 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hoppy Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4620 days ago 26 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 8 of 12 14 May 2012 at 5:12pm | IP Logged |
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Week 4 - 5/14
I'm definitely glad that I kept my week's goals low, because I was gone for 3 days last week and struggled to finish everything. Anyway, I did FSI Unit 6, 2 grammar sections (Verbs Present Tense, Adjectives), and got up to 250 vocab words. Goals for this coming week: -Numbers, Perfect Tense, Imperfect Tense, Personal or Distinctive 'a' -FSI Units 7-8 -125 Vocab words As usual I will continue to listen to Coffee Break Spanish (now on lesson 22). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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