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Gatsby’s Spanish Log [The Romantics] | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Gatsby42 Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4490 days ago 55 posts - 72 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 17 of 22 10 April 2012 at 2:50am | IP Logged |
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It's exotic for me in a sense, it's just that Balkan culture is a little conservative
for my liking. I generally don't get along with a lot of my family because they insist on clinging to old traditions whereas I usually do all I can to go in the opposite direction of all those traditions. I'm sure if I got a chance to interact with regular Albanians who weren't my family, I'd find more to be interested in, but then again, maybe not. 3-9-12 Active Learning Pimsleur: Unit 16 done, Unit 14 and 15 repeated twice; Total time invested: 15 hours Michel Thomas Foundation: Disc 4(x2), Disc 3(x1); Total time invested: 8 hours L-R for Oscar Wilde's "The Faithful Friend/El Amigo Fiel: 40 minutes Anki flashcards: Chapter 7+8 review x2: 3 hours Total Amount of Spanish Learning: 27+ hours. Passive Learning Mexican Music(El Cafe's Yo Soy): 2 hours Total Amount of Passive Learning: 7 hours Yeesh, but a few days since my last log! It's been a busy weekend for me, though I made sure to get some studying in. Made a new Anki deck more catered toward my current chapter of class. Kinda running into a wall when it comes to memorizing preterite verb conjugations. Recognizing them is one thing, recalling them is another. Finally had class today after the teacher was absent. It blows my mind just how little Spanish is done in this class. Today we worked on a review packet for an upcoming test, which I found to be mostly easy with some huge exceptions. Meanwhile, haven't done any L-R. Call me a baby, but just trying to organize the entire thing has so far been a gigantic time sink and a gigantic pain in the ass. It's annoying to try and make a bi-lingual text and it's annoying to have both texts on screen in halved windows. It seems like it could produce good results, but I'm thinking it may be better to wait till I'm at a higher level and focusing instead on exercises like self-talk. Self-Talk seems like it'd be a great exercise. I've also been assigned two Spanish papers and a full five minute presentation that I need to present in Spanish. The latter is due in three weeks, so I need to get working on it. Still fighting the good fight, slowly but surely. Until next time! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| camdo2 Newbie United States Joined 4524 days ago 26 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 18 of 22 12 April 2012 at 8:07am | IP Logged |
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No, I wouldn't buy AnkiMobile unless you are planning on using sound or images. I'm considering shelling out the 25 (as I could use Anki for so so much more) but for now AnkiWeb will suffice (read a tutorial, it's totally fine on iDevices for just text.
Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Gatsby42 Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4490 days ago 55 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 19 of 22 15 April 2012 at 5:44pm | IP Logged |
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Hah, bought it was before you warned me not to! It's alright though, I suppose that's
incentive to work on some audio cards. 4-15-12 Active Learning Pimsleur: Unit 19 done, Unit 17 repeated twice, unit 18 repeated twice; Total time invested: 15 hours Michel Thomas Foundation: Disc 5 x2; Total time invested: 10 hours Anki Chapter 8: 1 Hour Speaking with Language Partner: 15 minutes Total Amount of Spanish Learning: 32.5+ hours. Passive Learning Mexican Rap: Don Omar - 1 hour Destinos episode 5 - 30 minutes Total Amount of Passive Learning: 8.5 hours Been a bad week for studying. Been very busy with various things, none of which were all that academic. Despite that, I've been keeping up with Pimsleur. I was very excited to see that in Michel Thomas, he begins to teach the "command" tense. I love the method in which he teaches because it's allowed me to successfully guess certain conjugations. More than ever I have confidence in speaking with my Mexican friend. When I first started he usually couldn't even understand my Spanish, but now I can belt out sentence after sentence at him. With a lot of my most common phrases, I'm starting to be able to say them without much thought. I made an account on Conversation Exchange and got in touch with a couple people. It's very exciting because I feel like teaching them English will help me understand the language all the better. I'm hoping that my patience with them is returned when they're helping me with my Spanish. My Mexican friend is very impatient and isn't knowledgeable enough about the language to explain things to me in depth. However, before I focus on becoming a speaking wiz, I need to focus on not failing Monday's Spanish test. I still haven't started studying superlatives(I know "the best and the worst, but not the greatest, the ugliest etc.) Sadly, I have work for most of the day today so I'm out of luck until tomorrow morning. Hoping the updates start returning with more regularity and substance within the coming week. PS: Just had my first conversation with a Spanish language partner. This is the first real time I've spoken to a fluent Spanish speaker who isn't my friend since that time in the hospital, and boy, was I nervous. There's something about being in a conversation like that that just gets my heart pumping. I guess the reason that listening comprehension is counted as it's own skill is because it's one thing to recognize words on a paper, it's another to recognize them through sound only; especially when you've learned Latin American Spanish and the speaker is from Spain. That said, I feel like this guy will be a great language partner. He complimented me on my Spanish, saying that I wrote and spoke well, which can't be entirely true, but it's nice to hear. Edited by Gatsby42 on 15 April 2012 at 7:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Gatsby42 Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4490 days ago 55 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 20 of 22 17 April 2012 at 6:15pm | IP Logged |
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4-17-12
Spanish test was simultaneously rough and easy as hell. Content wise, it was very easy. I've only done about two hours worth of L-R, but I feel like as a result, my comprehension has gone way above the simplified course text we get. All the reading comprehension sections were easier than ever. Basically, when I got to things like the preterite of stem changing verbs, I didn't have confidence in almost all the spelling. I had a good idea of the patterns that they followed in their stem changes and I'm pretty sure I used all the right verbs, but I must've made a lot of mistakes. As a result, I'm considering either changing the way I group verbs on Anki or perhaps I'll just supplement them with paper flash cards. I feel like I learn way faster when I write the cards out. Today I'll be writing one of my first compositions since last semester. I love writing Spanish as it's when I feel the most competent at the language; I can't wait to compare last semester's work with this year's progress; here's hoping it's as exponential as I think it is. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Gatsby42 Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4490 days ago 55 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 21 of 22 19 April 2012 at 6:01am | IP Logged |
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4-18-12
No word yet on the Spanish test. However, I would like to report that I had a blast writing my current composition. Got to play around a lot with the past and present tense and feel like I'm starting to find a good rhythm with alternating them. On top of that, while my fluent friend was peer editing my paper, he gave me something that I haven't gotten in the past year. A compliment on my Spanish. He doesn't have the biggest enthusiasm in the world for Spanish and since we're always pretty blunt with each other. He'd say things like "This is good for how long you've been learning Spanish, but a lot of it still sounds kinda dumb." Today, I got a "This is still very simple, but it's actually a legit Spanish paper." I'll take it! I also found another good language partner. We had a thirty minute talk, I got a chance to speak some Spanish, I gave him a little more opportunity to practice his English. I have to say that teaching people English is a blast. What's even more interesting is that this person's English is roughly as good as my Spanish. There were times when I'd say something in English, he wouldn't understand, and I'd have to find a way to say it in Spanish and vice versa. I feel like as a result, we're simultaneously teaching each other our target languages while learning more about the natures of our native languages. Very excited to speak with more people. So far, I've spoken with a person out of Spain and Chile. I got an appointment set up with a Mexican girl on Skype this Friday, who claims to have a very strong Mexico City accent, but whatever, I ain't scurred. Gonna try and do my first self talk exercise in preparation for that. Also, I'm getting back on track with Pimsleur and Michel Scott tomorrow. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Gatsby42 Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4490 days ago 55 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 22 of 22 25 April 2012 at 12:11am | IP Logged |
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4/24/12
Active Learning Pimsleur: Unit 22 done, Unit 20 twice, unit 21 repeated once; Total time invested: 17 hours Michel Thomas Foundation: Disc 5 x1 +1 hour (11 hours total) Writing a Spanish paper: two hours (two hours total) Total Amount of Spanish Learning: 40+ hours. Passive Learning Cafe Tacuba Radio: 2 hours Total Amount of Passive Learning: 10.5 hours Not really a whole lot to report. Studying has been slow going, but steady. I continue to practice speaking with my fluent friend on a daily basis and feel like I have complete confidence in speaking "survival Spanish". Currently I'm learning about the imperfect tense and future tense. Which I'm happy to find are both conjugated rather easily. My teacher insists that I'll have trouble confusing the past tense and imperfect tense, but they both seem pretty self explanatory to me. Seems similar to the menial difference in how Spanish differentiates between the present tense and the present progressive. However, I may eat those words. By tomorrow I need to not only write an essay using the past and imperfect tense; I also need to do an entire unit worth of grammar drills on top of being fully reviewed for a unit test that I haven't even studied for yet. This is where the failures of curriculum planning really bite you in the ass, but I do like those days where it's 7+ hours of Spanish cramming. By the time I'm done, my brain is stuck thinking in Spanish for days. I'll post one big log with my results in a couple weeks. Once I'm done studying for finals, I'll be a lean mean Spanish machine ready to tackle the six week challenge. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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