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Starting Over: Heather’s Spanish Log | ||
Tags: Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Heather McNamar Senior Member United States Joined 4785 days ago 77 posts - 109 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 1 of 2 30 January 2012 at 5:25pm | IP Logged |
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¡Hola a todos! Me llamo Heather, y esto es mi log de mis estudios de español. Here I will document my attempts to learn Spanish to a competent level, beyond what I learned in school.
Here's the background. I first started learning Spanish when I was fourteen, and I studied all through high school. While I enjoyed the classes and I got good grades, I never really got to be that fluent. Also, my Spanish teacher was something of, shall we say, a slave driver, and that left me with a bad taste in my mouth for quite some time. To make matters worse, since I never really used what I knew, I lost much of what I had learned. (And I am definitely not stupid; I scored a 4 out of 5 on the AP Spanish Test!) So here I am, thirteen years after graduation and rekindling my dreams of becoming a polyglot. Now I'm starting from scratch, learning again what I used to know, but wanting to go deeper. My ultimate goal is to be able to understand books, movies, and TV programs and converse with ease. For tools, I've chosen Camino del éxito, which is available at studyspanish.com, along with SpanishPod101 and Livemocha. In addition, I've signed up for the 6 Week Challenge on Twitter. I'm ultimately hoping to end full-time study by the end of April so that I can concentrate on Japanese for the May 6WC. It may be tough, but I'm gonna stick it out. Y ahora, ¡adelante con el español! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Heather McNamar Senior Member United States Joined 4785 days ago 77 posts - 109 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 2 of 2 01 February 2012 at 12:57am | IP Logged |
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Today I completed Unit 2 of Camino del éxito. The first two units of the course are different from the others in that they are designed to build up your pronunciation skills before you start to learn how to communicate, although there is some basic vocabulary involved. That means starting tomorrow we get down to business.
One thing I've noticed about the second unit that kind of bothers me. The audio tracks are read in turn by a female speaker and a male speaker. I've noticed that the female speaker pronounces the word silla (chair) kind of funny. I had always had it drilled into my head that the double l in Spanish is always pronounced like a y, with some regional variations. However, instead of saying see-ya, the woman says seel-ya. (By the way, the man says see-ya.) Am I missing something? Is there some kind of regional variation I don't know about? Well, even though it kind of is a thorny issue, I'm not letting it get to me and just saying see-ya as I was always taught. So tomorrow starts the 6WC, and I'm planning to get my hands dirty en español. I expect it to be fun, but also a challenge. I expect inordinate amounts of heartache and triumph and milestones. I'm really looking forward to it. So, ¡vámonos! ¡Hasta mañana! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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